Member Article

Leading business coach honoured with University award

A leading personal/career development coach and speaker received an honorary doctoral degree from Birmingham City University this week in recognition of her outstanding business achievements and services to the voluntary sector in Birmingham.

Carol Coombes is the founder and senior partner at Cracking Leadership and has a well-earned reputation for developing highly motivated, top performing teams that thrive in the toughest of climates. This has resulted in her being in constant demand from big-name business leaders in the UK and abroad.

A key area of Carol’s work with senior leadership figures across all industry sectors includes the conception, development and facilitation of high impact leadership development courses, such as the renowned six-month ‘Sharpening Your Edge’ programme for women.

Her business career started when she set up a community nursery and mobile crèche in the Ladywood area of Birmingham, having been unable to find suitable childcare for her own children. She then helped to develop a furniture project which passed donated items to people who needed them, followed by a job as a social enterprise development worker for Co-Enterprise Birmingham, helping to set up a number of sustainable community projects.

Carol was Chief Executive of the Citizens Advice Bureau in Birmingham, before leaving to work with the education trust Common Purpose and then Caret, leaving them to establish Cracking Leadership in response to the need for truly pragmatic business leadership support. .

In 2009, in recognition of her expertise and contribution to industry, Carol was awarded what pundits have said was the first-ever (and still, the only) OBE citing Services to Leadership across the UK, in addition to her charitable work, which currently includes the development of an initiative that aims to help us to manage death better, as a society.

She received the honorary doctorate award on Monday 12thMarch at the Awards Congregation ceremony which celebrated the work and achievements of students graduating from Birmingham City University’s Faculty of Education, Law and Social Sciences (ELSS)

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Laura Stannard .