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Anna Russell

Anna Russell

Christchurch, New Zealand

Anna is fascinated by the ways in which individuals and the wider systems they inhabit influence and shape each other, whether groups, organisations, communities or societies. The potential for developmental growth of individuals and organisations to enable humanity, at its best, to flourish, motivates her work.

Her more than 20 years’ experience in developing leadership began with designing, creating and facilitating high impact ‘whole person’ experiences for personal and leadership learning and growth. Since then Anna has provided group leadership development programs and served as executive coach and consultant to strategic leaders across public, private and not-for-profit sectors in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Anna helps organisations function in ways that more closely support their purpose. She helps leaders grow their ability to engage more consciously and effectively with the complexity of their organisation and its context by growing new patterns of sense-making and response. She draws on theory from the fields of adult development, complex systems, positive psychology, leadership, coaching psychology, and organisational and individual change and development.

Anna has recently provided individual and collective leadership development for some of New Zealand’s largest companies as well as organisations in the education, aid & development and health sectors, including the two largest Health Boards, and several projects supporting community leadership and resilience. She enjoys the richness of collaborating with others to create synergies that can positively shift the nature of society. Anna is recognised for her ability to connect and integrate ideas from different fields of thought, challenge and provoke fresh thinking and perspectives, communicate concepts in ways that generate transformational and practical change, and create environments that support people to courageously embrace growth and change.

Anna holds an MEd (Hons) degree focused on leadership and coaching, postgraduate qualifications in management and counselling, a BSc (Jt Hons), and is an accredited consultant for the Leadership Circle Profile and several other psychometric tools. At home in Christchurch, New Zealand, she contributes to the governance of several communities and organisations focused on well-being, growth and mental health. In her free time, she loves being a moving part of the natural environment – on foot or two wheels, in or on the water, up a mountain, or sliding down one.