Rachel
Co-founder
Rachel has spent over two decades helping people and teams get better at the things that actually matter at work: how they communicate, how they handle conflict, how they lead, and how they build something worth being part of.
Her route into this work took her from managing teams at ClearChannel Entertainment to postgraduate study in organisational psychology, coaching, and law, to training as an improviser across the UK and US. As it turned out, the principles underpinning good improv and good teamwork are basically the same, and she has spent her career bringing Applied Improv to audiences who didn't know they needed it.
Rachel spent six years at Riot Games, helping them grow from 300 people to over 5,000. She led large-scale programs covering management skills, coaching and feedback culture. She was a founding member of the digital workplace team, rethinking how thousands of people communicated and collaborated day to day. She also led a company-wide initiative that transformed how Riot hired at speed without lowering the bar.
She co-founded PeopleStorming to bring that experience to organisations that are serious about getting this stuff right. PeopleStorming works with everyone from early-stage startups to global firms like Google, Goldman Sachs, and Amazon, and from gaming studios and healthcare companies to marketing and financial services organizations.
Rachel works extensively with distributed and remote-first teams, many of them navigating the particular friction that comes from managing across cultures, time zones (UK, EMEA, APAC, US), and different workplace norms.
She doesn’t do corporate buzzwords or watered-down feedback. She believes that people can do remarkable things together when the conditions are right, and that building those conditions is a craft worth taking seriously.
Her superpowers are...
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Elevating conversations - helping leaders recognize the impact of their tone and language.
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Infectious energy - bringing a spark to every interaction.
Certifications & education...
- Management - BA Hons
- Coaching - Post-grad Diploma
- CIPD Certified in HR & Training (equivalent to SHRM)
- Agile Scrum Master (ASM)
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
- Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF)
- Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)
- Organizational Improvisation Practitioner
- Design Thinking Facilitator
Andre
Co-founder
Andre is a seasoned and dedicated coach who draws on over twenty years of leadership in high-performance, product-oriented technology teams. He got his start as a software developer at an ISP, where he turned his experiences into a technology book.
His subsequent roles saw him scale as a leader, culminating in a position as the Director of Engineering for a 400-person engineering team at Riot Games. Following his success with scaling teams he moved to Director roles at Facebook and then LinkedIn.
He has led product engineering across many domains and has deep experience with growing leaders, designing organizations, driving collaboration, managing change, mapping complex systems, recruiting, and leading product and technology strategies.
It is this experience that allows Andre to build deep empathy with new and seasoned leaders alike. He's taken the journey they're on and is never happier than when helping them get to their destination.
His superpowers are...
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Shaking the snowglobe - challenging people in a playful way that gets them thinking.
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Decomposition - breaking down difficult or complex topics into simple explanations.
Certifications & education...
- Adaptive Leadership
- Technical Product Management
- Agile & Scrum Methodologies
- Distributed Systems Engineering
- Physics - MSci Hons. (ARCS)
- Nanomaterials - MRes (DIC)
