Her philosophy is training is only effective when it changes people’s behaviour and is sustainable. This is especially important in a climate where professional education is increasingly necessary and the return on investment in training and development has never been a more pressing issue.

After completing studies at Reading University and following a year abroad working in Germany, Karen started her career in publishing with McGraw-Hill, Bertelsmann Online and John Wiley & Sons, working within the professional sales and marketing team as a B2B manager. A move from publishing into the sourcing and management of training course delivery meant that she successfully contributed to the growth of CIFT, an international financial training company, based in London.

One of Karen’s key responsibilities at Applied Learning is to focus on building real partnerships between her clients and the best expert trainers. Working closely with a wide network of management development and finance training professionals she is able to select the most appropriate trainer and training approach for the client’s needs. She also ensures the valuable input from clients is incorporated in the training so the company’s performance is enhanced to its full potential.

She adds real value and support to her client’s requirements, and to the design and development of the programme. She also manages the project, ensuring the delivery of highly successful, interactive and integrated tailored training programmes and open courses.

His experience includes running a Strategic Trading desk, FX (including currency options) and gold trading desks, money market trading, and using capital markets products as part of proprietary trading strategies. He has also developed hedging programmes for clients including currency overlay and derivative based hedging products.

At Applied Learning he works predominately in the role of independent business advisor to ensure all aspects of the client’s training and development needs are met. He also sources a number of our associate expert trainers and keeps in regular contact with them to ensure our trainer expertise is maintained.

Gerald plays a major role in Applied Learning Courses (our sister company) in brining training and content together to create a series of live, interactive, short open training events. These events help to provide a career arc of continuous development for both corporate and individual professional clients through an applied integrated/blended approach.

He shares the Applied Learning philosophy and vision that “the true evidence of learning having taken place is authentic behavioural change. Without real support, review and monitoring, change may happen but will not have permanence”

Gerald is a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle Business School and a frequent television and radio broadcaster on risk, decision making and financial market commentaries (BBC World Service, Sky News, ARISE TV)

Natalie worked for 5 years as a project leader at Forum Europe, a global training firm specialising in tailored leadership, sales and customer service learning solutions. Clients she worked with included American Express, Amgen, British Petroleum and Willis Insurance. Prior to this she spent 5 years as a project manager for CIFT, a financial services training consultancy, working with major companies in the banking industry to successfully implement technical and management development programmes. The early part of Natalie’s career in the training industry was spent as a course manager for a corporate language training provider.

Natalie has a degree in French and Italian with European Studies from the University of Sussex.