Meet the
Team

Director & Psychotherapist

Mark Hashimi

Director
Psychotherapist MSc UKCP EMDR

Mark, having previously held a number of senior management positions over the last fifteen years, has significant experience managing mental health and wellbeing, as former head of workplace wellbeing at Mind (Hammersmith & Fulham), as a psychotherapist, trainer, public speaker, mental health first aid instructor and from his own personal experiences. Prior to working in mental health, Mark worked in credit for 10 years as senior credit manager at EDF Energy. Responsible for banking £3.2bn PA through a recession, he understands the pressures managers can face.

Mark works closely with COS Stores, University of London, WPP Group, Ogilvy, Hiscox, BBC Worldwide, Cabinet Office, AIG Insurance, Allianz, Met Police, NHS, Sage Publishing to name a few. Mark facilitates bespoke mental health sessions with a strong focus on proactive intervention and long-term sustainability, challenging stigma and effective communication, including addressing issues around homeworking and mental health.

Mark takes an “end-to-end” approach to wellbeing strategy implementation when working with clients; he is experienced in reviewing, enhancing and writing mental health policy and embedding welling strategy.

Alongside corporate training and consultancy, Mark works as a psychotherapist and counsellor trained in transactional analysis and EMDR. Mark co-designed and delivered the “Trauma and Bereavement” training for those impacted by the Grenfell tragedy and Mind’s core mental health and emotional intelligence workshops delivered nationally.

Training and Business Development Manager

Louisa Strain

Accredited Coach | Consultant | Personal Trainer

Louisa is a mental health and wellbeing expert, trainer and facilitator and business development professional. She is an EMCC accredited coach, trained at postgraduate level, as well as a qualified personal trainer and fitness instructor. She is passionate about improving mental health and wellbeing in the workplace and specialises in mindset and behavioural change to enable individuals and workplaces to thrive. She is a Mental Health First Aider and has studied CBT, self-compassion and mindfulness. Since 2018 she has worked with individual clients and organisations to foster resilience, confidence, self-esteem, emotional intelligence and skills of self-awareness, using a combination of approaches.

Louisa previously had fifteen-year career working in acquisitions, business development and account management in corporate academic publishing and before that she worked for several learned organisations and in higher education. She understands the demands of busy managerial and leadership roles and the challenges of working for large and small organisations. Louisa has a deep understanding of the complexities of habit change and she is passionate about inspiring and motivating change in the context of busy and stressful professional lives. She has lived experience of overcoming several mental health and personal challenges and she balances a busy work, home and family life bringing a calm, uplifting, fun and positive approach to her work.

Training Manager & Counsellor

Claudia Denington

Digital Training Manager
Psychotherapeutic Counsellor

Claudia has had several roles in the field of mental health, having worked extensively with adults, children and young people in schools and businesses across the UK. After leaving the banking sector, she worked as manager of workplace wellbeing for Mind in Hammersmith & Fulham. This involved the design and delivery of bespoke training sessions to clients from business sectors. 

Claudia works closely with organisations to create packages that are tailored to their specific needs. Claudia has designed bespoke mental health packages for Regents University, Thorpe park, The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and H&M. She has trained many organisations including Accor hotels, BNP Paribas, the Met police, Merlin Entertainments, to name a few. Claudia delivers training and talks to leadership and employees at events, conferences, online and face to face.

Claudia has designed and delivered several interventions for young people and teachers around mental health, which are running in schools across West London. Working with National Mind she designed and piloted a resilience programme, which is currently being rolled out in classrooms across England and Wales.

Claudia managed a project at The Anna Freud National Centre, where she developed resources and training for GP’s, enabling them to support people presenting at the doctors with anxiety & depression. In all her work, she draws upon her lived experience, having been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and PTSD in her university years. Claudia is passionate about ensuring that organisations provide the right level of wellbeing support, to allow employees to thrive in their roles.

Claudia is a Mental Health First Aid instructor and has a degree in Criminology and Psychology. She is particularly interested in the impact of sexual violence, having worked on the design of interventions for a global prevention charity before moving into mental health related work. Claudia is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, trained in Transactional Analysis and is a member of the BACP. She is also undertaking a training in Nutritional Therapy.

Senior Trainer

Katrin Viella

Senior Trainer
Business Psychology

Katrin is an experienced workplace wellbeing consultant and senior mental health trainer with an academic background in business and clinical psychology. She initially started out in cross-cultural leadership development and international recruitment. Later she gained experience in the clinical field working with people with most complex and severe, enduring mental illness.

Combining her training background and clinical experience she then specialised in mental health training. She developed and led a fully accredited Mental Health Training Academy for the charity ‘Mind’. Managing a substantial training team she delivered therapeutic counselling qualifications, workplace wellbeing programs in large organisations and educational settings. Over the years Katrin has trained GPs, A&E staff, education professionals, senior executives, middle managers and staff across all sectors and different industries. She is also a licensed and highly rated MHFA trainer and has trained hundreds of MHFAs. Her expertise lies in safe implementation strategies for these support networks. Katrin now works as an Associate Trainer with some of the largest national and global organisations on mental health culture change programs embedding prevention, earliest intervention, and crisis support. Katrin is also an expert in workplace suicide prevention and cross-cultural mental health aspects. 

She is an advocate for earliest intervention, recovery and de-medicalisation of mental health conversations. Katrin draws her own mental strength from physical activity, nature, mindfulness and exploring different cultures. 

Head of Finance

Julia Thompson

Head of Finance

Julia has worked for Strategic Wellbeing for over 20 years with many diverse roles including administration and coordination, customer relationship management, finance and contract management, adapting her skills as the business and client needs have developed over time. Julia is an advocate for good mental health and wellbeing, both inside and outside of work.

When Julia joined the business, she was responsible for coordinating conflict management courses which at the time were niche and new to business sectors. Julia now works as head of finance for Strategic Wellbeing and is responsible for invoicing, accounting and reconciliation.

Creative Designer

Katherine Kier

Creative Designer

Katherine has been a part of the Strategic Wellbeing team since 2021, responsible for creating the supporting documents that accompany programmes and services, including quick reference guides and training materials. 

As a creative designer, she understands that living in a world full of information can be overwhelming. Consequently, she utilises the power of visual appeal to deliver easily digestible content for clients, delegates and employees. 

With a personal passion for health & wellbeing, she has experience working as a fasting coach, introducing the power of cleansing & detoxification to people who struggle with unhealthy eating habits. 

She now lives in Costa Rica as a creative consultant and a foundational wellness coach. 

Trainer and Consultant

Ruth Heaton

Trainer and Consultant

Ruth specialises in the design and delivery of engaging and transformative business skills and personal development training and manages the delivery of learning and development and mental health and wellbeing activities to all staff within Gateley Plc, a top 50 law firm.

Having practised as a Banking & Finance solicitor for 8 years, Ruth discovered a passion for learning and development and facilitation during a career break when she joined a training consultancy, designing and delivering training to Sainsbury’s plc, Cadbury plc and later, Kraft. She also wrote training courses for The Mind Gym.

Ruth returned to the law and then took advantage of a great opportunity to combine her passion for learning and personal development with her knowledge and experience of working within a fast paced and demanding legal environment and is now the head of L&D for the firm. Ruth has a personal interest in promoting good mental health in the workplace and is an experienced Mental Health First Aid Instructor .

Trainer & Consultant

Caroline Cooper

Business Mentor and Transformational Coach

I have 25+ years’ global business experience, predominantly in public relations and communications which culminated in my Managing Director role at a luxury/fashion brand communications agency in London with a staff of 160.

Since 2017, I have been working alongside Founders and Business Leaders in the Fashion and Luxury sector as a mentor and coach, supporting them with business decisions as well as leading on staff care and development.

I embarked on Transformational Coaching training with Animas in 2020 to evolve my skills and to enable me to take on more one-on-one coaching clients. For someone who intuitively gravitates towards human kindness, curiosity and lifting people up, it’s been a natural fit. I love combining my intuitive coaching style with my commercial understanding and business experience.

As a certified Transformational Coach, I aspire to create a warm and empathetic space for my clients to feel seen, heard and accepted. Holding my clients in unconditional positive regard, with total acceptance, is fundamentally important to the coaching relationship. My hope is that in our safe and empathetic coaching relationship my client is able to openly explore their ways of being in the world, and it is from this new vantage point that change is possible. Once we see with greater clarity, we can reframe and reform unhelpful thinking and in turn, our behaviours.

Fundamentally, I hope to help my clients move from confusion or uncertainty to clarity and action; helping them explore their own truths and beliefs with compassion and supporting them to create the change that they want in their lives.

My extensive personal experience means that I am particularly attuned to support the fashion/luxury business community, the world of PR and advertising, business leaders and managers aspiring to create humane workplaces and support staff wellbeing, as well as neurodiverse individuals and their families.

I have a BSc in Psychology from University College London, an MSc in Nutrition from King’s College London, a Mental Health First Aid Certificate and an Accredited Diploma in Transformational Coaching from Animas.

Trainer & Consultant

Jed Mitchell

Trainer and Consultant
Counsellor BACP

Jed is passionate about delivering mental healthcare support, from people experiencing a range of symptoms and those seeking more fulfilling and productive lives, both at the individual and organisational level.  Following a career in business development with leading financial technology organisations including Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters, Jed is retraining as a Psychotherapist, due to qualify this year. Having provided support within an NHS psychiatric setting, he is currently on placement providing therapy on behalf of Camden Council and Mind. Combining experience within the corporate and mental health care sectors, as a consultant Jed delivers training to facilitate wellbeing within organisations.   

Lived Experience Speaker

Abbie Mitchell

Lived Experience Speaker

Abbie Mitchell is a mental health and suicide awareness advocate and campaigner. She has worked for some of the leading UK mental health charities (Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and Together for Mental Wellbeing) setting up peer support networks and championing lived experience expertise for mental health education. Abbie currently works in youth mental health running the charity Fitzrovia Youth in Action’s (FYA) peer mentoring programme in partnership with Mind in Camden and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust working across schools and youth services in London.

Abbie is passionate about the power of ‘owning our own narrative’ through story telling in helping to reduce the isolation often experienced by those struggling with their mental health and encouraging further understanding around the issues that can arise. 

At age 14 Abbie lost her mum to suicide which had a huge impact on her and throughout various parts of her life she has lived with anxiety, depression and disordered eating. Working in the field as a professional and using her own lived experience Abbie has featured in multiple media campaigns about her mental health working with organisations such as Huffington Post, National Mind, Stylist and Time to Change and has been a speaker and panellist for various events as well as being a past Trustee for the Suicide Bereaved Network charity.

Financial Wellbeing coach

Lorraine McFall

Financial Wellbeing coach

Lorraine is a financial wellbeing expert, trainer and coach and uses a combination of coaching and mentoring skills with practical advice and information to help clients and trainees feel empowered and financially confident.  Lorraine believes that achieving financial wellbeing is fundamental to achieving wellbeing in other aspects of our lives.

Lorraine started her career as a solicitor in Scotland but after a career break she became interested in how to help people feel more empowered about their financial situation and take action to create the life they want instead of settling for the hand they felt life had dealt them, regardless of their bank balance. 

Lorraine has a Diploma in Financial Planning and started her coaching career after completing a Wise Monkey Financial Coaching course and continued her learning by training with Barefoot Coaching and she is now working towards ICF accreditation.

Lorraine’s strength throughout her career has been to explain difficult concepts in clear, concise, engaging language and her open, friendly style encourages questions and offers reassurance to trainees on what can be a difficult and emotional subject for many.

Lorraine has trained in many organisations including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,  KPMG, the Supreme Court as well as working 1 to 1 with individuals in a variety of roles.  She is also a Director of the Institute of Financial Planning.