Our team

People make the difference

Our experienced team of coaches all come from corporate backgrounds and understand the challenges that come with holding senior leadership role. Our strongest recommendation is that, after 25 years, most of our work still comes through referral from our past customers and clients.

Máire Brankin, Founder & Director

Máire Brankin is an experienced executive coach, renowned for her ability to achieve profound results. She has been a leader in the field for over 25 years, during which time she has coached hundreds of senior people in both the public and private sector. Máire has worked with chairs, chief executives and directors. She has coached the boards of large organisations and teams of many types, from the executive teams of NHS Foundation Trusts to the sales teams of major banks.

Trained as a teacher, social anthropologist and psychotherapist, Máire has developed her own successful approach to executive coaching. She is interested in organisational change, equal opportunities and the culture of organisations and is passionate about improving the outlook and performance of individuals, teams and businesses. She creates bespoke programmes to enable people to build on their existing leadership and management skills and help them to develop their teams and organisations.

Máire founded Oxford Executive Coaching in 1991 to broaden the scope of her work and train others to become great coaches. Like Michelangelo, she sees the potential ‘angel in the marble’ and works with her clients to discover how changes to their personal beliefs can transform their levels of achievement, release their true talent and enable them to deliver the vision of their organisation.

Her specialties include coaching women aspiring to board positions and medical and legal professionals as leaders and managers. She is also a coaching supervisor and mentor and a member of the Institute of Directors and Women’s Irish Network.

Paul Brankin, Director

Paul is an experienced chairman and company director, who has held a variety of positions in a range of organisations in the private and public sector. He trained as a research physicist at Kings College London, Manchester University and Warwick University and worked as a senior manager in scientific instrument companies for 30 years. Paul has worked in R&D, engineering, production, marketing, sales and general management and served on the board of several companies and organisations. He has been responsible for taking ideas from initial concept through to profitable commercial exploitation, growing new businesses, establishing successful marketing operations in East Asia, completing two successful major acquisitions and helping large public organisations through periods of significant change.

From 1994 to 1995 he was seconded to the then Department of Trade and Industry as an Export Promoter for Japan and was awarded an OBE for services to exports to Japan – specifically helping companies understand and work with Japanese business culture.

Paul became an Executive Coach in 2003 and, alongside Maire, has coached several hundreds of senior people in both the public and private sector. He coaches directors of large organisations and teams of many types, particularly the executive teams of NHS Trusts and medical directors. He particularly enjoys working with young professionals helping them decide on their career direction.

In addition, Paul was a non-executive director of Oxfordshire Health Authority from 1991-2000, a Governor of Oxford Brookes University from 1988-95 and a Trustee (and Chair) of The Oxford Trust from 1995-2019.

Linda Wancke, Office Manager

Linda has worked for Oxford Executive for over 15 years. She is responsible for administration, finance and client liaison. Before joining us, Linda ran her own small employment agency and (in partnership with her husband Henry) the International Family Tennis Championships.

As well as being a brilliant office manager, she enjoys playing tennis, travel, reading and socialising with her friends and family.

Carol Williams Donahue, Associate

Carol joined us as an Associate following a thirty-year career in the Financial Services sector. In her various senior roles she drove extensive leadership development and talent initiatives, with a particular focus on emerging leaders and supporting women in leadership. She is an accredited coach with a passion for facilitating people through key transitions. Carol first became aware of Oxford Executive 20 years ago when she commissioned Maire to do some senior leadership coaching for the large bank she worked for. Carol sat in on one of the coaching sessions and was so inspired by Maire’s approach that she decided to explore a career in executive coaching herself.

James Pritchard, Associate

James has worked with Oxford Executive as an Associate for many years. He is an experienced executive coach and coach supervisor. He led a programme to build a coaching and mentoring service to drive cultural change in central Government and subsequently contributed a chapter to the recent Sage Handbook on ‘Coaching and Organisational Development’. His own enquiry
is the application of Yoga and other Vedic wisdom to executive coaching.

Lorraine Reid, Associate

Lorraine has worked with Oxford Executive as a coach and a client. Her background is in healthcare where she began as a clinician and has worked for many years as senior executive in mental health and physical healthcare in the NHS and independent sector . She is an accredited coach and certified NLP practitioner with a diploma in psychotherapy and is interested in releasing creativity and combining these approaches to develop high performing teams.