Hello again. I’m Claire.

I’m a transformational coach, facilitator, writer and creative human who has spent much of my working life exploring what it means to lead, create and live as our fullest, most alive, wonderfully complex selves.

These days, the heart of my work is one-to-one partnership.

I work with leaders, founders, changemakers and creatives who are willing to go deep – particularly when they know that an old way of being, working or leading has run its course, even if they can’t yet see exactly what comes next.

I’m interested in the places where professional and personal transformation become impossible to separate. Where the question is no longer simply What should I do? but Who am I becoming? What feels true now? What wants to be lived (even though it terrifies and delights me in equal measure)?

My sense is that for many of us, these questions never go away. Being willing to follow where they lead, and step in wholeheartedly to the places they take us, is deeply needed. What becomes possible when we stop contorting ourselves to fit old paradigms, and follow what is truly alive in us instead, matters far beyond our own lives.

Alongside my private one-to-one work, I partner with organisations, lead occasional time-bound offerings when I feel the unmistakable pull to create something new, steward the Joy-Led® Creativity Collective, and write poetry and personal essays.

It doesn’t all fit neatly in a box. I’ve stopped believing it needs to.

My professional background

I founded my business, Claretta Consulting Ltd, in 2015 after 15 years working in organisational leadership and transformation, including senior roles at Barclays and as HR Director through one of the UK’s largest social housing mergers at the time.

I went on to train professionally as a coach in 2016 and am an ICF Professional Certified Coach (CPCC PCC) and a Certified Leadership Circle® Practitioner with almost 2,500 hours of coaching and facilitation experience.

Over the past decade I’ve coached CEOs, executive teams, senior leaders, founders and business owners, and partnered with organisations internationally on leadership, culture and change.

I love this work. I particularly love the moments when my clients see their own power in a new light, and realise they don’t need to become someone else to embrace it.

You can find a fuller official bio here.

And then there’s the longer story…

Of course there is! If you’d like the less sensible version, it probably begins on a Tuesday night in 2013, when I peeled myself off the sofa and went to a salsa class.

I was separated from my then husband, trying to hold our marriage together for the sake of our two young children, working in a senior role I no longer loved, and doing a pretty convincing impression of someone who was absolutely fine.

Going dancing on that particular night made very little logical sense, but something in me said go.

Young me had loved dancing. I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten quite a lot of things.

After that first magical night, a year of weekly salsa led to Ceroc (a fun, easy-to-learn version of modern jive). Much later came a trans-Atlantic adventure in San Francisco as I stumbled upon conscious burlesque: improvisation, artistry, glitter, sisterhood, zero critique and the extraordinary experience of women delighting in themselves exactly as they are.

Somewhere along the way, I began seeing that following my own joy and sense of aliveness was not frivolous. It mattered and over time that knowing seeped into everything.

It led to me finally letting go of my marriage. Leaving my corporate career, building a business I loved, and eventually training as a coach.

I began writing poetry. Made new workshops, new offerings. I gathered people to create alongside me. I made things that worked and some things that didn’t. Changed direction. Changed it again. Started writing a memoir about my journey back to dance. Realised that I was still living the story I’d written. Pressed pause on publishing it. Started playing the piano again. Danced around my living room. A lot. Led writing circles. Wrote more and more poetry. Experimented wildly. Occasionally wondered what on earth I was doing, and where it was all leading.

All the while taking deep joy and nourishment in my long-term one-to-one coaching and organisational partnerships, and letting go of work I had outgrown.

The through-line I can see now is a growing willingness to trust what makes me feel more alive – and to help other people hear and follow whatever is calling them too.

Perhaps this poem sums up who I am and how I live, right now. This video is excerpted from an online Spoken Word show I produced and hosted in March ‘26. A little of the story behind it is here.

The rabbit hole

There’s plenty more here if you feel like wandering.

You can explore my writing, including more poetry and personal essays from my ongoing, definitely non-linear journey of creative reclamation over on Substack.

I also occasionally post on LinkedIn, where you may wish to follow me.

You can read about The Joy-Led® Creativity Collective, the community of women I gather with each month to write and be witnessed.

And if what interests you most is my professional background, qualifications and organisational work, you can find the full official bio and credentials too.

Thank you for reading.

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