Chris Cowen


Consultant - Coverdale UK
Has been with Coverdale since 2007

Career in brief

Chris has chosen a diverse career path that has seen him as a chartered accountant, sales consultant, board level financial manager, independent business consultant, interim manager, care worker for the learning disabled, counsellor and executive coach.

In his work as a consultant and trainer he focuses on:
  • Working with boards and senior teams clarifying aims and developing enabling strategies
  • Facilitation at senior management and board level
  • Executive coaching
  • Aligning behaviour within organisations through the design and delivery of training interventions for team development
  • Design of competency based leadership development programmes
Some recent assignments
  • Design and delivery of a team development tool to enable a high level leadership team in the public sector to model the organisations core values
  • Design and delivery of a high profile leadership development programme to fast track senior managers with top level potential
  • Facilitating a board level team dealing with a "mission critical" event
  • Coaching on a senior management development programme in the public sector
  • Coaching board members through a business diversification programme in the sport retailing industry
  • Coaching on a programme aimed at enabling MBA students to maximise the learning and skill taken forward into their future workplace
Previous career experience:
  • Audit manager at Coopers & Lybrand
  • Corporate planning controller in WHS
  • Sales consultant for division of GE offering IT bureau service
  • Finance director of listed publishing and direct marketing company prior to acquisition by Readers Digest
  • Interim CFO role as part of management buy-in team in a national retail chain
  • Consulting to over a dozen clients in publishing and book retailing industry on strategy, finance and business development
  • Interim project management role in national charity establishing a new business stream
Education and Training
  • Institute of Chartered Accountants - fellow
  • Joint Diploma in Management Accounting
  • Coverdale training
  • Advanced diploma in Integrative Counselling
Working languages:
  • English
Chris says:

"A turning point in my own career was my initial experience of Coverdale training. This helped to confirm a belief that for most people work needs to play a meaningful part of their lives. This, plus a natural curiosity in human behaviour, has shaped both the way in which I work and the areas and type of work that I do. The result has been immensely rewarding.

Away from work, family and friends form the central part of my life. I enjoy cycling and gardening as well as reading, music and watching sport. " 		Chris Cowen
Chris Cowen
Coverdale UK