Our People

Dr Colm Murphy - Faculty

Dr Colm Murphy has over twenty years’ experience of designing and delivering coaching and team coaching to individuals and teams across the public and private sectors. His team coaching experience ranges from working with globally dispersed teams, to leadership teams of publicly quoted organisations, to project teams. He is the Program Director of the Global Team Coaching Institute Senior Practitioner Program and was Director of Coaching Programs at Smurfit Business School, University College Dublin from 2017‑2022. Colm’s area of expertise is in taking a psychological approach to assist leaders and their teams to achieve meaningful behavioural changes that drive business results, through focused and engaging coaching and training interventions. Colm has a special interest in team dynamics and completed his Doctoral research in the University of Portsmouth on the contribution of team coaching to team effectiveness. He is co‑editor of the ‘Team Coaching Casebook’ (Open University Press, 2022) and is an accredited Master Practitioner Coach (EMCC). He has been the global work stream lead on Team Coaching Accreditation for the EMCC.

John Hill - Faculty

John is an accredited Systemic Team Coach and Executive Coach working with leaders and senior teams, both in the UK and internationally. He has a background in the cut and thrust of the world of business, gained in global organisations, SMEs and start-ups, and moved into coaching and leadership development around 10 years ago. John is passionate about being an agent of positive change, drawing on his fascination with the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of people and organisations, which informs what makes them the way they are – and, perhaps most importantly, what they could be.

John Leary-Joyce - CEO and Founder

John is our CEO and founded the Academy of Executive Coaching in 1999 with one administrator and over the years recruited and collaborated with many talented directors, trainers & administrators to develop AoEC into the prestigious brand it is today. 

With his tireless entrepreneurial spirit, AoEC has become a highly successful international coaching training organisation with professional accreditation from ICF, EMCC, & AC. Previously, he was MD of Gestalt Centre London growing the business fourfold in six years and gaining a Company Director diploma with the Institute of Directors. 

John is a highly principled leader, drawing on and applying his experience from a long career as a Gestalt psychotherapist, executive and team coach, trainer and supervisor. He is past president of EMCC UK where his focus was on maintaining standards for coaching and mentoring and building collaboration between the different professional bodies. 

In 2010, he founded with Peter Hawkins the Systemic Team Coaching programmes. He has an MA in Executive Coaching, is PCC with ICF, qualified supervisor, regular presenter at international conferences and author of Fertile Void, Gestalt Coaching at Work 2014 and co-author of Systemic Team Coaching - 2nd Edition, 2024. His other passion is dancing Tango which links with leadership, coaching and Gestalt.

Maxine Gooding - Faculty

Maxine Gooding is a team coach, facilitator and organisational dynamics consultant. She has over 25 years’ experience in business leading teams, developing strategy, managing global change initiatives and improving customer experience. She knows first-hand the complexity of working in fast moving large-scale organisations. A graduate of the Systemic Team Coaching Diploma and OD practitioner, Maxine focuses on liberating the human element of business through leadership, teamwork and organisational performance.

Moira Nangle - Faculty

Formerly Director of Organisation Development at Virgin Atlantic Airways, Moira is a creative, perceptive OD professional with qualifications in Training, Teaching, Psychotherapy, both one to one and team coaching, and an MSc in Organisation Development. She has Director level experience in all three sectors. Moira has designed, delivered and evaluated OD interventions from Board to Shop-floor level ranging from business strategy to organisation design, new product development, talent management, culture change, and customer service. During the last few years she has worked with senior teams in a coaching or consulting capacity across Europe and in Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Middle East to develop the internal capability and capacity to lead and manage change. Moira is a visiting lecturer in HRM and leadership at City University London, and is also an associate of Roffey Park Leadership Institute where she works primarily in the areas of leadership and change.

Neil Atkinson - Faculty

Neil worked in the business world as a digital communications and marketing expert for three decades before moving into coaching and leadership development. An ICF PCC-accredited Advanced Coach, he’s passionate about supporting people to develop themselves, their careers and their potential, as well as helping teams become more effective. Neil has studied positive psychology and mindfulness/meditation and created training programmes in wellbeing and resilience. He brings these interests to his coaching practice and his role as a facilitator on many coaching training programmes.

Professor Peter Hawkins - Faculty

Peter Hawkins is Honorary President of the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC). For the last 30 years he has been helping organisations in many parts of the world connect their strategic change, their organizational culture and their leadership development. He has written extensively about leadership, leadership teams, coaching and supervision. Currently his major concern is the growing gap between the increasing and changing challenges for individual and collective leadership and how leadership development is failing to evolve at the same speed. The AoEC Systemic Team Coaching suite of programmes, diagnostic tool and coaching are based on Peter’s 5 Disciplines model which in used internationally. He regularly blogs and publishes papers on these and other topics. He also is also Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School University of Reading UK and Emeritus Chairman of Bath Consultancy Group, visiting professor at the universities of Bath and Oxford Brookes, chairs Renewal Associates and is enjoyably kept busy by his wife, three children and their partners, five grandchildren, and numerous hens, sheep, goats, steers and guinea fowl and large gardens where he lives on the edge of Bath in the UK.