From Boardroom to Breakthrough: Group Coaching, Leadership Transitions, and the Science of Leading Collectively

Dr Ruth Simpson is an executive coach, researcher, and founder of Animi, with over 20 years of experience coaching senior, executive, and board-level leaders. Before moving into coaching, Ruth spent her corporate career as a management consultant at PwC, and in sales, marketing, and distribution roles at Mobil Oil and Esso Petroleum. She holds a PhD and an MSc in Coaching and Development and is accredited by the EMCC to Master Practitioner level under the Global EIA framework. Ruth's PhD — undertaken at Oxford Brookes University and presented at its 2026 Research Conference — breaks new ground by examining how group coaching supports leaders making the transition into senior positions. She developed the first empirically grounded theory of how group coaching works for leaders in a workplace context and produced a practical group coaching framework applicable to organisations grappling with leadership development, succession, and collective intelligence. Her upcoming book will be called Developing Collective Leaders: The Group Coaching Advantage.Alongside her practice, Ruth is Vice Chair of Bourne Education, a large Multi Academy Trust in the Southeast of England, and she hosts her own podcast, The Evolution of Leadership. Her clients describe her as pragmatic, direct, skilled, flexible, and empathetic.