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About Breda Flaherty

Developing leaders and professionals in changing organisations


Style and approach

Breda Flaherty Breda is an Independent Consultant with a portfolio of career interests spanning the small business, healthcare, charity and university sectors. Breda focuses on improving the organisational performance of individuals – especially at the most senior levels – to enable them to be more ambitious for the quality of their offer to customers, staff and organisations. She believes in developing people to achieve their potential to make the contribution they are capable of in their work and in their lives. Breda focuses particularly on developing leaders beyond their ‘professional expert’ base, to make the stretch into leadership of teams, services and the wider business. She takes a strategic view, assesses political, financial, and business trends, and strengthens people in their ability to perform well in the context of changing organisations.

Experience and talent

Breda has an extensive coaching portfolio with top leaders who hold an organisational or national brief, and with early career leaders stepping into their first significant leadership roles. She enjoys designing large-scale leadership programmes and has led national and regional leadership development teams, supporting the creation of tailored, insightful learning approaches to new business challenges. Her areas of expertise include leadership and organisation development and senior team facilitation. She holds significant experience in maximising the potential of group learning models, such as learning groups working across varied business and professional boundaries, to achieve greater entrepreneurialism, inclusion, and diversity in the way we approach innovation and change. Breda has a particular interest in working with professionals to improve their professional business partnerships. Drawing on her academic experience, Breda also has a strong track record in developing those stepping into national or career-first professorships and leadership roles.

Recent projects/clients

A development professional and coach for twenty years, Breda works with a number of SMEs based in business partnership models, including legal services partnerships, accountancy firms, and medical partnerships. In public services she works with large charities such as The Alzheimer’s Society, British HIV Association (BHIVA), a range of NHS and social care services, and Universities. Some assignments with these clients will be short interventions to achieve strategy review, top team development, mediation between executives and partners in conflict and senior executive coaching; others will be substantial leadership and change initiatives to achieve sustained business improvements over time.

Previous work history

Breda formed her own consultancy company in 1992, specialising in developing effective small business partnerships, leadership development, and organisational change. She holds national roles in healthcare in developing NHS Aspiring Chief Executives and Directors as a member of the faculty at the national NHS Leadership Academy, and has been a core contributor to the Academy's internationally award-winning programmes to grow leaders at all levels of healthcare. She has been a Leadership Associate at The King’s Fund (a national charitable Trust specialising in healthcare policy analysis and leadership development), leading on London-wide healthcare initiatives. Breda leads the MSc Leadership at the Postgraduate Department of Brighton and Sussex Universities Medical School, and also focuses on growing effective University-business partnerships; she leads a substantial income generation business which attracts education and development funding into the University sector. Breda is a champion for the ‘widening participation’ and engagement agendas, and is a member of a number of University Boards. Breda has held Trustee and Board roles in the charity and education sectors.

Qualifications and development

Breda has an MA and BA from Cambridge University and is currently pursuing an additional MSc in Strategic Innovation Management, to increase her focus on entrepreneurialism in relation to digital change. She holds Postgraduate Diplomas in Management and in Organisational development. She is a coach, a member of the Institute for Action Learning, and is practiced in the use of personality and diagnostic assessments.