When a team starts to come alive, and individuals care beyond their remit, magic happens. When you unlock firestarters they ignite the team’s potential.
Work with our firestarters
Our team of firestarters brings decades of real organisational experience to every team they work with.
Kate Smith - Principal Consultant and Founder
I believe you shouldn't have to choose between a high-performing culture and one where people actually want to stay. That conviction comes from 25 years of commercial leadership - the energising teams, the dysfunctional ones, and everything in between. I founded We Are Firestarter to help leaders and organisations build that - through diagnostic work, team development, and facilitated programmes designed to shift behaviour in ways that stick.
Fiona Wilkinson - Associate
With 35 years at board level in communications, marketing and sales, including as Chief Communication Officer at Visa, I've navigated complex, multi-national businesses through serious change. Alongside that, I've sat on boards and charity committees, including as a non-executive director in fintech and chair of Speakers Trust, so I bring genuine boardroom and governance experience as well as coaching expertise. I help leaders taking on bigger roles think clearly and move forward with confidence.
Diane Law - Associate
The best people development isn't a programme you send your team on: it's a route you and I map together, built from what already works in your organisation, so growth becomes part of how the work gets done. That approach comes from over thirty years designing and delivering learning strategies for organisations including Shell, BP and the University of Oxford, and building and leading the L&D function from the ground up at Newton Europe, including the team whose work, alongside colleagues across the business, won Training Journal's Leadership Development Programme of the Year. I now work with organisations to build learning cultures that are sustainable and built to stick.
Nina Pattani - Associate
My work is with professional women who have built successful careers on paper, and who want to feel successful on their own terms. That focus comes from close to two decades navigating the same territory myself: first as a clinical pharmacist, then as the founder and director of a family-run pharmacy business, and now as a coach. I help women in leadership find clarity, spot the patterns they can't see for themselves, and step into a way of being that actually fits.
