Phyllida is a workshop designer and facilitator. She worked as an actress and singer for 12 years, including 2 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in various productions in the West End and around the country. She also taught a course on ‘Women in Shakespeare’ at Washington University in St Louis and participated in workshops and lectures on Shakespeare for several British universities.

Since 1998 she has been working in the public sector designing and delivering workshops, including 18 months running race awareness and diversity courses across the Criminal Justice System.

She then moved to the Department of Trade and Industry as a consultant in their futurefocus@dti facility working with DTI and its customers on scenario planning, performance management, business planning and project working between 2000 and 2003. This led to further involvement with the ‘learning the habit of innovation’ programme and subsequent involvement with the i-lab project working in universities across East Anglia. She also collaborated with the DfES to build a set of scenarios for the future of education and life-long learning that are still used to test policy ideas across Government.

Since 2003 Phyllida has been an associate of Olivier Mythodrama and now of Contender Charlie, delivering workshops on inspirational leadership and change management. She continues to work with public sector clients on diversity policy and also runs creativity workshops for several public and private sector companies.