Who we are
Lime is an energetic team of results-focused, intuitive problem-solvers. We share a bold aspiration: to create extraordinary results in large organizations, and use those as a lever to positively affect the way business is done around the globe.
Our approach demands that our people are able to conduct both rigorous analytics and nuanced people interactions. Intellectual horsepower plus warmth and humor is a rare mix that we recruit carefully for, and are proud of. The Lime team shares a core set of beliefs about what is important in our work, the best approaches for getting results, and what we want to create with our clients and for the communities in which they operate. These beliefs act as touchstones for decision making and they help shape the solutions we architect with clients.
Managing Partner
Sarah has twenty years experience helping senior leaders guide their organisations through transformation. She is an organisational behavior maven who helps clients find clarity out of complexity, decode how their organisations work, and shift their operating model to drive higher performance.
Sarah has lived and worked in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia serving clients such as Cisco, Coca-Cola, Commonwealth Bank, Red Hat, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Microsoft, Pfizer and SAP. Clients describe Sarah as direct, high energy, and deeply insightful about the underlying performance dynamics of people and teams.
Sarah founded The Lime Group in New York in 2009, seizing the opportunity presented by the disruption of the GFC. The Lime Group is a team of organizational experts and passionate problem solvers on a mission to stamp out mediocrity in business. Earlier in her career Sarah worked with McKinsey & Company. She is certified in Kantor Structural Dynamics, Neuro Linguistic Programming and DiSC, among other things.
Sarah currently lives in Sydney with her husband and three noisy children. When not working she is happiest outdoors… likely doing something active and a tad dangerous.
Associate Partner
Elissa is an Organization design, leadership development and performance improvement expert. She works with organizations and leaders to quickly drive to the core of what they need to accomplish how to do it. Clients consistently remark on her combination of insight into human performance plus clear, focused strategic thinking.
Prior to working with The Lime Group, Elissa founded the private client firm Truly Accomplished, and strategy consultancy Strategy 42. She was a McKinsey & Co. consultant specializing in organization design and strategy of large scale and high growth companies in financial services, pharmaceuticals, non-profit, and healthcare industries. She deeply understands fast track leadership development and was herself VP of Finance at Citibank at age 27, before turning her focus to developing others as Director of Leadership Programs at American Express, and Director of Organizational Development at AIG.
Elissa inspires clients to take action based on strong business acumen. She believes:
In addition to working with clients, Elissa is passionate about contributing to the field of leadership and performance improvement. Her books include Managing Motivation: A Manager’s Guide to Diagnosing and Improving Motivation, and Evidence-based Performance Improvement, published by Taylor & Francis in 2008 and 2011.
Elissa studied Organization Design at the University of Southern California. She holds an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Rochester. She is a Steeler fan living in the Greater Los Angeles area.
Associate Partner
Verena leads our London office. She is an advisor and resource to C-level executives and senior teams. Based on a decade of experience serving a variety of organizations, she believes that the key to driving sustained performance and growth lies in fully harnessing the energy and talent of an organization’s people.
Verena’s work spans from being a performance catalyst for leadership teams, to systematically shaping culture and environment to align with strategy. Her career began in finance at a hedge fund, progressed to strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company, and for the past seven years has been focused on leadership and organizational effectiveness.
Verena holds both PhD in Business and a MBA from University of Vienna, Austria and an MPA from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is a certified executive coach.
When not working with clients, Verena can often be found upside down in a yoga pose – she teaches vinyasa and hatha yoga. She and her husband Manuel live in London.
Associate Senior Consultant
Ed is an organisational psychologist with knack for quickly getting to the root cause of organisational issues, and a talent for using humour to enable leaders to face tough feedback and translate it into productive action. For twenty years, he has transformed the performance of organisations by making the most of the talent and aspirations of the people that are their lifeblood.
He has deep experience in talent management, culture change, employee engagement, leadership development and organisational behaviour. He deploys a range of skills in qualitative/quantitative analysis, strategic consulting and facilitation. He is obsessed with delivering tangible results – objectively measuring performance at both a commercial and a human level.
Ed’s experience spans a range of industries, large and small organisations, public/private sectors, and countries across Asia-Pac, Europe and North America. He has a particular affinity for financial services, professional services, high-tech, transportation, FMCG and retail organisations. His recent work includes:
– Working closely with a large bank to understand employee sentiment and to work closely with them to become more customer-centric, productive and values-led;
– Partnering with a major professional services firm to support their growth by fostering a more client-focused and innovative culture;
– Implementing a radically new talent management strategy across a large utilities company;
– Transforming the leadership effectiveness of key people across a major retail organisation.
Prior to joining Lime, Ed served as Managing Director and Director of Consulting / Talent Management in a range of human capital consulting firms including Kenexa (an IBM Company), SHL, Saville Consulting and Hudson. In this work, he has played a significant role in developing new solutions that bring together leadership, talent and engagement into one approach.
Ed completed his degree in Psychology at the University of Glasgow and his Master’s in Occupational Psychology at the University of Nottingham. He has been a Sydneysider since 2010 where he lives with his partner (also a business psychologist) and two young sons. Outside of work, his passions include cycling, reading and photography.
Organisational Consultant
Özlem is a consultant, facilitator and coach, dedicated to optimising human potential by creating safe spaces for people to grow and contribute in the workplace – driving positive outcomes for both people and organisations.’
No stranger to the challenges of running a P&L and managing geographically distributed teams, Özlem spent over 15 years in the world of Corporate Accounting and Global Project Management, which included secondments to the UK, India and Dubai. While she began her career focused on the financial business levers, she realized over time that the toughest problems, and the game-changing improvements almost always involved shifting how people and teams worked. Thus her focus changed to the field of human and organisational behaviour.
Prior to joining Lime, and subsequent to her international project management career, Özlem worked with a number of specialist consultancies in leadership and diversity. Her work included promoting positive change in organisations by developing emerging leaders, driving inclusion and equality, and coaching leaders. Özlem thrives on leveraging her business acumen combined with an intuitive and carefully honed skillset in human and team behavioural change – analytics plus soft skills – to make a difference in the world. She believes that we need to bring our whole selves to work in order for individuals, businesses, and ultimately, for societies to thrive.
Özlem holds a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and began her career as a Certified Practising Accountant (CPA). She has completed a Certificate IV in Training, Assessment and Facilitation (UTS), and is also certified in several holistic modalities designed to empower individuals with self-awareness, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and the integration of body, mind and spirit.
She is particularly passionate about the fusion of commerce and philanthropy, through socially-conscious businesses. She holds the position of Advisory Board Member at Leaders In Heels – creating female leaders.
Executive Facilitator & Coach
Over the last 15 years as a facilitator, coach and consultant, Tania has built a reputation for transformational performance and thinking. She works with Executive and Non-Executive functions, Directors and Partners developing clear business strategy, meaningful corporate governance, future leaders, creating successful leadership environments and cultures, planning for effective succession, high team performance and impactful communications.
Tania’s experience is industry agnostic and spans clients across the public, private and communications sectors, professional and financial services, executive search, charitable, NFP and education and recently includes: Oxfam, Deloitte, RBS, Specac, Macquarie University, Save the Children, Tesco Bank, Standard Life, Edinburgh University, St James’s Place, First State Investments, Stewart Investors, Beem It, Scottish Futures Trust, NAG, Amnesty International, The Council, Burness Paull, Jupiter Asset Management, M&G Investments, Paddy Power, BHP, FFA and UBT.
Tania is passionate about creating mindful, purposeful, organisational change believing that when corporate bodies put their energy into good practice they can change the world for good, better serving the communities of which they are part.
Prior to qualifying as a professional coach Tania worked for over 20 years in the design and communications industry as a producer and creative director. She has sat at Executive Board level since 1996, and successfully led her own businesses since 1998. Tania has also held main board – NED, advisory board and trustee positions since early 2004. She is currently an advisory board member for Future Foundations (the leading provider of personal, leadership and academic development for young people in the UK), and has recently been invited to sit on the advisory board of a new tech start up – Simply Get Results. Her approach has its foundations in understanding the intricacies of change and specifically what it takes to lead organisations, manage teams and the delicate nature of talent/people development.
Tania is an accredited executive coach, certified master practitioner and trainer of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), a certified practitioner of Insights Discovery personality profiling, Kantor’s Behavioural profiling and the Leadership Circle 360 framework; a member of the Association for Coaching, the Institute of Directors, the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Professional Guild of NLP.
Tania happily splits her time between Australia and the UK.
Leadership Expert & Coach
Originally from Newfoundland, Canada, Leah now calls Australia home. She spent 15 years working in the corporate environments of major IT vendors such as Lotus, Gartner and Citrix Systems in senior sales and marketing roles.
During an extended career break sailing in the Caribbean, she realised her biggest passion is people and performance. A new career track started with a focus in the talent management space, helping executives flourish at work and in life. Leah’s approach blends the latest research from the fields of Neuroscience, positive psychology, and organisational development in her leadership and team development work. Over the last 9 years, she has focused on working with executives as a coach and advisor in their current roles, and in the trajectory of their careers. Leah has worked with executives from organisations such as Cisco, Shoretel, IBM, BHP, Websense, Sun, Attachmate, Colonial First State and Commonwealth Bank.
Leah’s philosophy is that we all have a well of untapped potential and executive coaching can be a powerful process to help uncover our strengths, deepen self-awareness and allow us to move forward so we can thrive in our professional and personal lives. Our work life should be a source of engagement, growth and inspiration.
Leah studied Psychology at the University of Technology in Sydney and has completed a Graduate Diploma in Counseling and Communications from the Australian School of Applied Psychology. She has completed the Certificate IV in Training & Assessment and has also completed studies at the Institute of Executive Coaching. She is accredited in a number of psychometric tools including Genos Emotional Intelligence and The Leadership Circle. She has recently completed a Certification in Foundations of Neuroleadership. She is a member of the Neuroleadership Institute and the International Coaching Federation.
Executive Coach
Janette brings to her coaching the experience and perspective of a 20-year career in telecommunications and media. During her first career, she worked with British Telecom, Telstra and Nextgen Networks. She also had the opportunity to work as part of the broadcast unit for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Ten years ago Janette began transitioning her focus to leadership development with a focus on mindful leadership and building sustainable organisational cultures.
Janette combines her corporate background in business development, sales, product management, and marketing with a passion for helping leaders lead mindfully, develop as professionals and people, and increase their well-being. Her coaching style is grounded in her years working in challenging corporate environments. She relates to, and deeply understands the challenges her clients face in corporate environments. Her style is warm, pragmatic and quietly challenging as she works with clients to remove barriers to performance and deep work life satisfaction.
Janette graduated from the University of Wales with first class honours in Management Science. She also holds a Masters of International Relations from Macquarie University and a Diploma of Transpersonal Coaching from Nature Care College in Sydney (International Coaching Federation Accredited). She is accredited in LSI, GSI and Human Synergistics.
Executive Facilitator & Coach
Liane is a great communicator and has a reputation for quickly establishing trust, engaging all and asking the tough questions. She loves what she does and brings her down to earth, good humoured nature to deliver enjoyable and impactful engagements.
Experienced in a variety of techniques and facilitating at different levels, and disciplines across many different industries. She is comfortable with structured and free-flowing facilitation and thrives when engaged with senior leaders to leverage their leadership capabilities to create meaningful change and impact throughout their team and organisation.
15+ years functional responsibility as a foundation for the past 14 years consultancy experience across strategy, assessment, design, development, and delivery. Industry experience includes professional services, financial institutions, automotive, engineering, manufacturing & building, consumer products, advertising and media, not for profits, and Government.
With over 7500 hours of coaching experience, Liane has some of the most fine-tuned skills in the industry.
Liane coaches leaders who want to create a step-change in their effectiveness, from senior executives to first-line managers. Liane’s coaching and facilitation skills are highly regarded as engaging yet pragmatic, fun yet results focused. She relies on an open, honest and trusting relationship that she is quick to establish. This allows her to create the space and appropriate tension needed to challenge each individual or group and allow them to find insight, personal growth, and shifts towards the desired outcomes.
Liane’s approach is low ego, high pragmatism. She doesn’t allow conversations to veer into the conceptual and abstract. She relentlessly brings the focus back to the practical implications for the leader/coachee. She has worked with organisations and senior management from Jaguar, Land Rover, Boral, Austral Bricks, CSR PGH, KPMG, Macquarie, Pfizer and the RTA among many others.
Liane holds a mass communication degree from Macquarie University, an MBA from MGSM, and is accredited in IECL Level 3 Executive Coaching and various assessments such as: LSI, MBTI, Hogan, DiSC, HBDI as well as other profiling tools. She is besotted with her long-awaited twins, Mathilde and Angus, as well as her very patient if slightly naughty furbaby. She spends her time between Sydney and her hometown of Berry on the South Coast of NSW. In her spare time, she enjoys a love of Formula 1, design and the arts.
Executive Presence Expert
Derek is our communications expert. He has been an executive coach, facilitator and professional actor for more than 20 years. He has worked with major clients in 19 countries around the world including the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, the UK and the USA. He specialises in helping leaders develop and refine their communication and influencing skills and is in particular demand in the consulting, legal and finance sectors.
He brings a distinctive blend of acting and corporate experience into his work. Whether recreating a challenging workplace interaction for a coaching client or working with them to improve their personal presence, confidence and delivery skills, Derek introduces a heightened and consistent sense of realism and credibility into the full range of client communication experiences. In the process, clients are extended, engaged, inspired and motivated. They gain the confidence to build on their existing abilities and develop new and powerful skills.
He has worked on multiple and diverse projects, including:
Derek has a BA, majoring in Communication, from Deakin University and is a member by invitation of the Golden Key International Honour Society, an internationally recognised organisation dedicated to academic excellence. He is accredited in MBTI®, MBTI Step II®, FIRO-B®, FIRO Business™, MLQ Plus™ and DiSC Personality Profiling System. He also has Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training.
As an actor, Derek has appeared in several productions for the Sydney Theatre Company and performed Shakespeare’s plays in Singapore, Hong Kong and China. He has appeared in many local and US television and film productions.
Executive Facilitator & Coach
An executive coach, counselor, facilitator and educator, for over fifteen years Stephen has supported and inspired hundreds of people to make important transitions into more effective and creative ways of being in the world. Leveraging his early career as a musician and research academic, Stephen combines the rigor of established best-practice frameworks with real-world practice to support greater individual and organizational well-being and performance. He has specific expertise in how to use and apply mindfulness and other reflective practices to improve communication and decision making. The results with business leaders who are accomplished in their field are astonishing.
Stephen is a highly experienced facilitator who regularly presents on wellbeing & resilience, applied mindfulness and decision making, communication skills, and leading through change. He has designed and presented workshops for financial services, law, education, and career management sectors. Using humour and a sense of play, his facilitation style is marked by flexibility, creativity, engaging with what is in the room, and an ability to combine fun with working on difficult issues.
Stephen’s coaching, facilitation, and research is underpinned by a deep curiosity about the nature of the human mind, and its power to grow and adapt. Stephen founded the discipline of Communicative Musicality – the study of the non-verbal ‘narratives’ that underlie all communication – and published a book on this topic in 2009. He has presented at conferences both nationally and internationally. Stephen’s style of coaching is based on this model.
A wise counsel for busy executives, Stephen’s approach generates deeper reflection and drives life-changing insight. Having worked with people undergoing both voluntary and involuntary career changes, Stephen’s empathetic and flexible approach allows clients to gain much more from the process, and find their own voice.
“I walked in massively sceptical – I’m a busy person and don’t like to waste my time, I found Stephen to be incredibly wise, thought-provoking and insightful. I never missed a session for the whole year we worked together” – Financial Analyst, Banking
“Stephen wasn’t wedded to a rigid framework. He not only helped me with my career goals but fundamentally changed how I see myself” – Leader, Education
Stephen gained his doctorate in music and psychoacoustics from the University of Edinburgh, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Psychology in the UK and Australia. He is a clinical member of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, and is qualified in transformational coaching, holistic counseling, and yoga. Stephen maintains his interest in research psychology as an Honorary Research Fellow in the Westmead Psychotherapy Program, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney.
Executive Coach
Ros has over 15 years of experience coaching global leaders, teams, and individuals to navigate through change and achieve business transformation.
Her business acumen and professional expertise is derived from over three decades of diverse professional and business experience across the Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Finance, IT and Utilities industries, including time spent as a ministerial staff member in the Parliament of Australia.
Ros worked on the personal staff of the Prime Minister and 2 Federal Ministers across portfolios in Finance, Transport and Communications, Industrial Relations, Aboriginal Affairs and Immigration. Her exposure to leaders of industry and the community, as well as to the ‘grass roots’ levels of society fuelled her drive to make a difference.
The common thread throughout Ros’s career has been people. She thrives on connecting with individuals and groups across diverse roles and industry sectors (45 + countries) to enhance their effectiveness. Ros has worked with leaders in organisations to help them develop insights and strategies to enable them to deal with ambiguity, and build competencies to drive organisational effectiveness.
“Ros is excellent at coaching people to transition, and brings a ‘systems thinking approach’ to problem solving. The work Ros did for our organisation was deeply transformative”
– Leader, Technology Industry
“Ros has depth, awareness, cultural awareness and sensitivity – which is why she can be impactful at all levels” – Leader, Social Investment Industry
Ros holds a Bachelor of Arts and is accredited in IECL Level 2 Executive Coaching, The Leadership Circle, and Birkman Profiling. Ros is an advisor to the Board of the Women’s Justice Network on HR related matters, including the recent recruitment of the CEO.
Executive Facilitator & Coach
Wendy is an experienced facilitator and coach, having spent more than 15 years working with major institutions such as Citi Group, ABN –AMRO, Phillips, and Baker & McKenzie, amongst others.
Wendy has a background in media and the performing arts and has spent more than 30 years living in Asia, 16 of those in Hong Kong where she ran her own company, Wag Productions.
Wag Productions worked extensively in Hong Kong, China, and Singapore with a number of major international corporations facilitating programs for all levels within an organisation – from customer service, right up to senior management and President level.
Wendy has spent much of her career working with middle to senior level staff of financial institutions, electronics manufacturers, legal firms, and Insurance companies in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Bangkok covering issues such as Diversity, Leadership coaching, conflict resolution and team building.
Now based in Thailand, Wendy has continued to bring her coaching and facilitating skills to a number of companies including Banyan International Resorts, Hyatt Regency, and Chiva-Som.
Wendy is fully accredited in Human Resource psycho-profiling tools such as Myers-Briggs and DISC and has mentored in-line and end of line management with these skill sets. She is also conversant with Neuro-linguistic programming. Fully acquainted and widely experienced with Myers-Briggs and DISC psycho-profiling tools.
Wendy has a passion for people and spends her life dedicated to improving communication skills in a practical and fun way.
Executive Facilitator & Coach
Bruce has over 28 years experience as a facilitator and coach. His facilitation experience ranges from outdoor experiential and indoor modular including a few highlights i.e. Microsoft (Sydney) taking leaders on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, National Australia Bank (Hong Kong): Cultural Immersion, Sign In: An Improvisation Theatre experience aligned to collaboration skill development.
Bruce has coached executive leaders from organisations such as; Oreedoo, Dubai World Trade Centre, Bystronics, PayU, Saudi Airlines, Mercer, Carrefour, International Rescue Committee, HSBC, and others.
For the past 12 years, Bruce created and still facilitates EarthCare, a development program for International School students where they become immersed into the local communities in the north of Thailand for 6 days with a learning focus on personal development, environmental, community connection, and sustainability.
Originally from New Zealand, Bruce has held a number of executive positions during his career an has traveled extensively. For the past 18 years based himself in Asia with frequent travel to the Middle East and Europe for executive development projects including leadership coaching and engagement, assessments, workshop facilitation, and keynotes. His work comes from a desire to support people’s growth by getting clear on “who they are”, “how they behave”, and “what impact do they have” on the people around them.
Bruce holds an Associate Diploma in Counselling and Communication (Australian College of Applied Psychology) and is an Accredited Marshall Goldsmith Coach. Bruce has also completed several Diploma’s in various coaching specialisations and is accredited in a range of tools including Hogan.
Lime's Meeting Culture Partner
Stop Meeting Like This is as much a movement as it is a set of tools, practices, and capabilities to help leaders reset the norm for how their organization uses its time.
Imagine if we told you we could double your workforce without adding any cost… Our work with a major multinational corporation has demonstrated that improving meeting effectiveness by a mere 10% is equivalent to adding 45 FTE. www.stopmeetinglikethis.com
Renee Cullinan is co-founder of Stop Meeting Like This. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies for the last 20+ years as a teacher, speaker and consultant. Renee envisions a world in which meetings are a place where work gets done, decisions get made, and innovations flourish – and where we recreate the white space to think, plan, and recharge. Her work is driven by an enduring belief in the power of high quality dialogue to transform the performance of organizations and the experience of the people who work within them.
Shani Harmon is co-founder of Stop Meeting Like This. For the last 15 years she has focused on building the capabilities of individuals within organizations and eradicating wasteful and mindless activity. Shani believes that work should be fun and that making it possible for people to be more connected and inspired by their work is the path to outstanding business results.
Lime's Graphic Facilitator
Red Stallion is a strategic visual consultancy led by Joseph Lowey. They support many of Lime’s events through witty and incisive, real-time illustration of team discussions. The result is powerful, nuanced visual journey maps and vision boards.
Visuals bypass the traditional thought paths of the mind to access new ideas, connections, and meaning. Words do not do the process justice, it has to be experienced… www.redstallion.com.au