About Tradesecrets

Our People

Meet some of our people.

Sam Bond

Director

Sam is a highly experienced Training and Development specialist and a qualified Business Coach. He has a long and ongoing background in live performance and entertainment. Sam set up tradesecrets in 1996 at the start of the Arts Based Training Movement and has worked with the biggest names in commerce and industry, including British Airways, Sainsbury’s, Wagamama, Specsavers and Unilever. He leads a team of 50 freelance creative consultants and Trainers. He plans and develops programs in consultation with Mel, Aidan and Lizzie.

In 2015, he teamed up with entrepreneur Tony Wood to create IMEUS, a unique and innovative online service that helps individuals to get personalised self-development advice from highly skilled business and presentation coaches.

Aidan Elliott

Associate

Aidan has extensive experience as a copywriter and presentation-coach with many major organisations. He also works as a part-time university lecturer in Shakespeare Studies, where he specialises in story structure and the way language is used to shape audience perceptions.

He works at both a strategic and tactical level and is comfortable working with clients at all levels of seniority. Clients find his ability to absorb, distil and summarise complex subjects particularly useful. With tradesecrets he has worked on projects with Nestle, The Prudential, Wagamama, CEO-CF amongst others. Aidan also worked as a writing coach for the authors of a recent book entitled Completing Capitalism.

Melissa Woodbridge

Associate

Melissa works as a Communication and Presentation coach in various sectors. Most recently helping to develop personal presence with Microsoft, GlaxoSmithKline, the Environment Agency and a Private Equity company. For Trade-Secrets she has joined Sam at Wagamamas, Coeo and Specsavers, working as a Guardian for Imeus too. She also works in the world of Executive Search assisting people reach the next rung of their career ladders and in particular helping C-Suite executives with media interviews. She has worked the Department of Health with their Assessment Centres, Tfl in training staff and she is a Trustee for the charity Touchstone, who help children on the autistic spectrum with their communication needs. She’s an actor, presenter and voiceover artist.

Lizzie Palmer

Associate

Lizzie is a dynamic, creative and intuitive facilitator and training consultant with strong communication, strategic, branding and relationship building skills.

Lizzie has experience on both the agency and client side. She started her career in advertising. Four agencies (including O&M and BBH) later, she joined Capital Radio becoming Marketing Director of the group.

As a Marketing Director she worked at Discovery Channel and at Orange. Here she was integral in changing the France Telecom operations worldwide becoming Orange, working across all areas and managing the issues that can arise from global and local teams. Here she was fostering cultural and behavioural change and managing the brand.

She facilitates, trains, consults and acts as a catalyst across the globe. She builds a bridge between the arts and businesses whilst having the experience to ensure the results for the client are delivered. She has worked with many prestigious companies helping them with areas from vision setting to leadership, setting values and cultural change, idea generation to sales and storytelling in business.