About Us

Training Talks was created by Joanna Bloxham, a brand communications specialist with expertise in both corporate and leisure sectors. A successful career with Air Canada, United Airlines. Lufthansa and Radisson Edwardian Hotels (where she was sales and marketing employee of the year 95, 96,97) created the perfect background to develop her course portfolio. Communication plays a vital role in all our intervention, ie what you say, how you say it and how you look and behave.

In addition to our retained experienced people, we also work with a group of qualified associate trainers and facilitators:

Presentation skills, leadership, communication, team working and customer care are the core training courses within Joanna's training portfolio. Joanna designs and specializes major training and facilitation initiatives for companies including Atos Origin, Octagon, Jack Morton, Carey England, Workplace Systems and Radisson Edwardian Hotels. Joanna managed a long-term assignment with the Congestion Charging project which included customer care, and leadership training - and - is another key example of her ability to see a training project through from brief to final implementation.

A successful career with Air Canada, United Airlines and Radisson Edwardian Hotels, where she was Sales and Marketing employee of the year three years in succession, created the perfect template for Joanna to launch her learning and development company Training Talks. Joanna has a global portfolio, including assignments in Singapore, Montreal (McGill), New York, Chicago and Fontainebleau (Insead) and Cambridge (Girton College).

Trainer and Facilitator

Presentation Skills Communication Leadership Teamworking Customer Care Facilitation

Joanna understands the needs of her audience and delivers with energy and enthusiasm, to promote interaction, participation and encourage a lively learning and development environment.

Joanna's special skills include her self-awareness and self-management coupled with her ability to build relationships. She is an excellent communicator, a bright and perceptive operator and has a sense of humour that carries her through all potentially difficult situations.

Simon Nash is the award winning producer of the BBC's 'Elephant Diaries' and 'The Abyss Live', and also worked on 'Planet Earth'. A Cambridge graduate in zoology he studied marine biology before becoming a television producer. He has a proven track record of visual excellence for over 20 years, with the past 12 spent producing series and programmes for the BBC's Natural History Unit. He is a compelling speaker with unique behind-the-scenes tales from across the world.

Simon possesses an enormous breadth and depth of experience that includes producing major Live Events, presenter-based programmes and Animal Diary series. His specialist expertise is underwater and deep-ocean filming. Most recently he worked as a Producer on the upcoming 'Frozen Planet' for the BBC - the third in the 'Planet' trilogy following the success of 'Blue Planet' and 'Planet Earth'.

Simon Nash - The Speaker

Simon has worked with leading presenters, including Sir David Attenborough, Kate Humble and Michaela Strachan to mention but a few. Simon shares his strategic leadership experiences in extreme environments where mistakes cost lives - e.g. 40m underwater surrounded by hundreds of sharks or when being charged by wild elephants - and how he establishes rapport with co-producers and external partners to develop optimum one team working. In summary, Simon gets the best out of people in challenging situations and delivers success stories on and off camera.

Described as engaging, creative, visual and inspiring, Simon Nash captivates his audiences and leaves them with memorable learning experiences. His most recent speaking assignments include:

FT Learning & Development
Cheltenham Science Festival
Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival
Wildwalk Visitor Attraction Bristol
Wildscreen Wildlife Film Festival

Why Choose Simon?

Simon leaves his audiences spellbound! Leaders go away thinking more strategically before acting, managing conflict more readily and planning key outcomes, based on lessons learned from filming the natural world that translate pragmatically into business life success stories.

A movement technique originally created by Rudolf Laban (choreographer) analysing time, space and weight in the human body. Felicity has developed an original application of this technique to deal with difficult meetings, challenging phone calls and workplace tension. Using graphs, objects, imagination and your own body, these series of exercises are designed to enhance awareness of others and your own body in space.

Benefits of Laban sessions are:

Increased physical presence in a room
Problem solving skills
Improved self-awareness of physical habits
Respecting others' physical space
Allowing others to speak their mind without engaging in conflict
Maintaining business objectives in contract negotiations
Working with physical symptoms of nervous energy under pressure
Being flexible with your voice, body and gesture to serve business goals

Application in the Workplace

By working with each of the 8 Laban effort actions, Felicity applies her original training course to the corporate setting:
Understanding the personalities you are working with and learning how to create positive and solution oriented interactions with fellow colleagues and clients.

Ben Forster is a singer/songwriter based in London. Originally from Sunderland in the North East of England he started his career at the age of10 as an actor.

Ben discovered Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack from his parents music collection and was incredibly inspired by the soul, Motown roots of the sixties. He then developed the love of singing and would practise and sing along with these legends. And through this -developed the unique sound you hear today.

When Ben was 16 he moved to London to pursue his career and trained at the world famous Italia Conti Academy of Performing Arts. During this time Ben was chosen to be part of the BBC's prime time fly on the wall documentary 'The Dream Academy' which aired to over 3 million people. Ben is well known to the West End stage, appearing in 'La Cava' 'All You Need is Love' 'Grease' and most recently 'Thriller'.

Ben is now gigging the London music scene and plays at some of London's top venues, as well as leading Corporate events. Ben Forster is experiential, charismatic and connective.

David has over 20 years' experience of training and coaching in some of the world's leading multinational organisations. After first working in market research, helping clients assess the impact of advertising campaigns and corporate communication on target audiences, an interest in interpersonal communication led to a move into learning and development in his mid twenties. He initially worked on helping managers and professionals develop their influencing style and negotiate with colleagues and business partners. Working for multinational clients in Europe and Scandinavia he developed his expertise in intercultural diversity and the impact it has on the way individuals and teams work. David now specialises in helping people communicate in their professional lives and trains and coaches people at all stages of their career.

Training Talks works with David to facilitate team growth and awareness using psychometric instruments such as MBTI to give an understanding of how personal diversity impacts on behaviour and how each team member can best contribute to team performance.

Lee Moone is a highly experienced actor, scriptwriter and role play artist with a passion to move people forward. Lee trained at the Birmingham School of Speech and Dramatic Art and enjoys full Equity status.

Lee's talent and expertise lies in his ability to bring a pragmatic approach to the commercial world by producing scripts that relate to actual business scenarios and making these authentic by assuming appropriate character roles for his audience to decipher.

"In my experience even the most reflective participant comes forward to comment on how the behaviour or communication might be adapted to achieve the best outcome"
comments Moone.

Training Talks works with Lee to facilitate role plays and to develop individuals and teams to become more self aware and recognise that assertive behaviour and communication matters.

Lee has worked with leading brands including Rolls Royce, Toyota, Volkswagen, Deloitte, BP, Network Rail in the following areas: appraisals, diversity, customer care, leadership, teambuilding and facilitation skills.

Lee Moone always evokes a response from his audience and takes them on a memorable and interactive learning journey.