Breda Flaherty

Biography

I am an Independent Consultant with a portfolio of career interests spanning the healthcare, charity and university sectors. I have led my own consultancy company over the past 25 years, specialising in leadership development, and organisational change projects, focused on developing public services to become ‘good to use’ for the public and ‘good to work in’ for staff. In the healthcare sector, I focus particularly on developing clinical leaders beyond their clinical portfolios to make the stretch into leadership of whole teams, services and organisations; I hold national roles in developing NHS Aspiring Chief Executives and Directors as a member of the core faculty at the national NHS Leadership Academy and as a Leadership Associate at The Kings Fund (a national charitable Trust specialising in healthcare policy analysis and leadership development).

I have an extensive coaching portfolio, both with early career leaders in their first significant leadership and team roles, and with ‘top of the office’ leaders holding a national or organisation-wide brief as clinical Professors or organisation Directors. I am particularly interested in the potential of group learning models, such as Learning Sets working across varied business and professional boundaries, to achieve greater inclusion, diversity and entrepreneurialism in the way we might achieve innovation and change.

Over the past 10 years, I have led MSc programmes at the Postgraduate Department of Brighton and Sussex Universities Medical School, where I also support PhD and Dissertation research, and champion the ‘widening participation’ and patient engagement agendas. I am a member of a number of University Boards, and focus on participation and potential across the education sector; I am committed to increasing fair access for all to academic opportunities and striving for everyone to have their chance to reach a good level of professional and personal development.

I very much enjoy developing people to achieve their potential, and to make the contribution they are capable of in their work and in their lives. I am currently actively learning about and developing a next step in my career into Trusteeships and a greater range of work in the charity sector.  

Other roles

At the national NHS Leadership Academy Faculty Breda leads on the Top Leaders Programme for NHS Board Directors, and the Nye Bevan Programme for Board Director development; Leadership Associate at The King’s Fund, where she has led on the Clinical Fellows Programme, the London Darzi Fellowship for junior doctors, and the Aspiring Nurse Directors programme for London.

Memberships and Associate-ships

Breda is a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and the Chartered Institute for Professional Development