The Team

Yvette has worked for nearly 40 years in the finance industry, during which she not only established herself as a natural leader and project manager, but also developed a well-honed ability in coaching colleagues to reach their full potential, supporting and mentoring them to achieve challenging objectives. With extensive recruitment capabilities and experience in leading diverse teams, Yvette is an excellent communicator with highly developed stakeholder management skills which she is looking forward to lending to the development of the Mentors for Women network. “I could never have imagined that my business experience and skillset would be so useful in the upbringing of my children and the management and support of my aging parents. Who knew that school life, teenage years and hospital visits would need so much planning, influencing and negotiation!”

Sam is a qualified coach and facilitator with twenty years’ public sector leadership experience, including as Deputy Chief Executive of two Primary Care Trusts.  She now runs the creative company Different Development, based in Sussex, and provides mentor training to a wide variety of organisations.  She is also a volunteer facilitator on the multi-sector Windsor Leadership Programme, held at Windsor Castle and Cumberland Lodge.
Sam specialises in bringing creative approaches into personal and organisational development work. She leads the internationally renowned Mastery of Self Expression workshop in Brighton, and a variety of creative masterclasses, including Being a Leader.  
Sam is also a playwright, director and poet, and author of Rhyme and Reason: The Poetry of Leadership (2014).  She is scared of heights, spiral staircases and not knowing what to say, yet has done a parachute jump, an abseil and long-form theatre improv.  She believes we learn most on the edge of our comfort zones.

Peter’s career has spanned many disciplines and sectors, with particular focus  on marketing and design. 

Tayla graduated with a 2:1 in Hispanic Studies. 

She has a passion for photography and social media. In the last year she has built an Instagram platform for her two dachshunds who are now brand influencers for multiple companies, achieving a circa. 2 million reach on the platform.

Tayla has been instrumental in a number of social media platforms, including business pages, band pages and a set of Facebook groups with over 1.5 million members in total. Her drive and passion for perfection, coupled with her knowledge of the online world gives her a real edge in the social media sphere.

Prior to joining the world of 9 to 5 when Tayla was not working on her online endeavours, she utilised her black belt qualification in Karate to work in multiple venues in London as a security operative, specialising in asset protection.  

​Diane enjoyed a 30 year career in the IT industry. She is passionate about service and developing high performance teams and about supporting women in their careers. 

Since leaving the commercial world of IT, she has been honing her needlework and knitting skills, is learning the art of quilting and has dabbled in a bit of singing too, even though she thought she couldn’t sing!. 

The past few years have been focused on building  Mentors for Women, providing a much needed distraction from world events and a desperately needed place for women to share their experience and expertise.