Eddie Palmer     Director

Eddie had a career over 18 years in Local Government in the U.K. and has worked in the corporate, public and private sectors in many aspects of management, research and facilitation.

Eddie was one of the founders of Open Futures in 1995, a group brought together because of dissatisfaction with existing tools for organisational change. He has qualifications in social work, management and training from universities in Sheffield and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

With Mike Bell, Eddie wrote the story of the Future Search Conference in Forres, Morayshire (published by Open Futures in 1998), one of the very few longitudinal accounts of a community intervention over several years.

Since 1990, he has worked predominantly in the non-governmental sector with large and small organisations, covering areas as diverse as social care, the environment, village hall committees, councils of voluntary service and capacity-building for community activists.

Since 2001, Eddie has been involved in partnership working in Scotland, publishing "Partners in Health" (2003), a toolkit for facilitators, for NHS Health Scotland.

During 2003, he was a member of the national VNTO Working Party on Standards of Governance in the Voluntary Sector

Eddie works in the following capacities:

• As a facilitator, with both small and large groups, with the emphasis on collaboration and involvement.
• As a trainer, mainly with issues of governance and management and with Board Members and managers.
• As a researcher, specialising in qualitative techniques.
• As a writer in community development and capacity-building.

Email: Eddie Palmer eddiepalmer@classmail.co.uk

Milda Zinkus      Senior Consultant

Milda has over 19 years of experience working within predominantly large corporate organisations in Human Resources, development and organisational change.

After taking a law degree from Oxford, she started her career with Unilever and once she had completed her graduate traineeship, worked in a large manufacturing site as Industrial Relations manager. She then moved to Northern Foods and worked in a variety of roles including Graduate Recruitment, a Board level HR role and finally as Employee Development Executive for the Dairy Businesses. It was here that she played a key role in the de-merger of the dairy businesses and the creation of Express Dairies – co-ordinating de-merger communications and the creation of the values and culture for the new organisation.

Milda moved to The Royal Bank of Scotland in 1999 and within weeks of joining was involved in the bid, acquisition and integration of the NatWest bank. Her particular focus was the cultural integration and internal staff communications. She left RBS in 2003 and became an independent consultant specialising in organisation development.

Milda’s career experience has two common themes – organisational change and personal development. Her consultancy work is centred on supporting organisations through her insightful diagnosis of the people issues and supporting people and groups to have effective conversations. Her work draws from the work of Dialogic change, Appreciative Inquiry and self organisation.

Milda’s professional development includes gaining an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck College, London, completing a 10 month programme of Leadership for Collective Intelligence with Dialogos and Open Space facilitation at Roffey Park. She has facilitated a number of large scale Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry events – both as an internal and independent consultant and sees this work as a key element of bringing together large groups of people to effectively get the whole system involved in making inclusive change a reality.

Milda’s email address is: milda@zinkus.com

Kerry Napuk     Senior Associate

Born in Montana and raised in San Francisco, Kerry graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in business administration and a masters degree in economics.

Selected as the national intern at the AFL-CIO, the American equivalent of the TUC, Kerry served a year in Washington, D.C. before becoming Research Director of the United Packinghouse Workers in Chicago. He left the trade union movement to join an applied research think tank in San Francisco where he managed the Rankine Cycle alternative propulsion system project for the California State Assembly and consulted with the California State Legislature on economic conversion.

In 1973, Kerry arrived in the UK and became a company doctor for a major clearing bank and eventually a professional non executive director, holding board seats at 10 small and medium sized companies. He also co-founded four new technology start-ups, raising £4.25m in venture capital. While a part time director, Kerry became interested in strategic planning for small companies which led to a best selling book published by McGraw-Hill, THE STRATEGY LED BUSINESS (1993). He also interviewed several management gurus for Insider Magazine, including Sir John Harvey-Jones, Tom Peters, Peter Senge, Gary Hamel, Richard Pascale and Gerard Egan.

Kerry has led seminars on strategic planning for organisations in Scotland, England and abroad. He also provided strategic input to candidates on the entrepreneurial course at Business Ventures and delivered the Masterclass at the MSC course in Healthcare at Stirling University. Kerry does pro bono work with NGOs in Eastern Europe through a Scottish charity, InterMinds (please see www.interminds.org).

Realising the difficulties in cascading future plans from the top team into any organisation, Kerry uses LGPs to get the whole system into one room. In this way, critical inputs are captured and detailed plans for implementation can be generated, creating commitment and ownership at the point of participation. Building on consensus at every stage and being driven by passion and responsibility, Napuk found that LGPs are a new and innovative way to unlock potential and increase energy and morale.

Email: Kerry Napuk k@napuk.demon.co.uk

Maggie Havergal      Senior Associate

Maggie's initial career was in hospital facilities management. In 1987, she was seconded to become an "internal change agent", working with a team from Price-Waterhouse to change the culture of the NHS in Grampian. After a successful project Maggie moved to Edinburgh to join Management Development Group, providing change management support and workshop facilitation across the NHS in Scotland. During this period she worked closely with Don Cruickshank , Chief Executive, on the Patients' Charter and Framework for Action.

In 1991, Maggie established her own consultancy which she ran successfully for over 15 years. While early clients were all from the NHS, her customer base soon expanded, and included the Scottish Executive, local government, charities and voluntary bodies, "quangoes" such as the Scottish Legal Aid Board and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the management teams in several Colleges and Universities. Consultancy work was also in England and Northern Ireland, and from time for the private sector. Her work for Weir Pumps Ltd. in Cathcart led to co-authoring THE FACILITATOR'S TOOLKIT published by Gower and soon to be published in its third edition.

Maggie is now Manager for Scotland with Skills for Health, the UK-wide Sector Skills Council for the health sector. She continues to support OFL, bringing with her a specific expertise in the public sector as well as her wide experience of organizations and change.

Maggie has a BA in Business Administration, a post-graduate Diploma in Marketing, and an MSc in Human Resources Management.

Email: Maggie Havergal, maggie.havergal@skillsforhealth.org.uk

Alan Gilchrist     Associate

Alan has worked in organisations for over 23 years. He first worked for 15 years in the oil industry in engineering and then senior management and commercial positions with I.D.F, B.P and Expro International. He has worked as a consultant for the last 8 years, with Impact and then Sheppard Moscow, before setting up his own business in 2005.

Alan has trained extensively in all forms of facilitation, through training in an MA in Development Training, psychodynamic, Gestalt and psychodrama trainings and many leadership and facilitation trainings.

He works with many different types of organisations, from large and small corporate businesses to schools, the NHS, the Children’s Panel etc.

Current areas of focus include:

• Open Space, World Café etc, large conversations (e.g. with the Scottish Executive Education Dept)
• Working with senior leadership teams in the oil industry, not for profit sector and the construction industry.
• Executive Coaching with senior leaders in large organisations.
• Coaching training in business and in education.

Email: Alan Gilchrist, alan.gilchrist@btinternet.com

ASSOCIATES

Maddy Halliday

Drennan Watson

OUR AUSTRALIAN CONNECTION