About Us
Premier Life Skills Limited is a stress management and well-being training company with more than twelve years experience of dealing with stress-related problems and issues affecting either individuals or organisations. Our trainers are stress management and wellbeing experts from relevant professional backgrounds, including health and education, all have the minimum qualification of a Diploma in stress management.
Premier Life Skills are dedicated to managing stress and well-being, helping managers and employees to respond positively to challenges.
We can help to build team or individual resilience to enable staff to perform effectively and productively.
We present a range of programmes designed specifically to tackle the issues of stress and well-being in the workplace and to support the work of stress professionals working on a one to one basis with clients.

Our Premier Life Skills Trainers
Jane Thomas
Director and Lead Trainer
Training and Development Consultant
Past Chair of the International Stress Management Association (ISMA)
Jane has become an experienced trainer and facilitator over the past 12 years, specialising in the field of stress and wellbeing management within the workplace.
She is highly motivated and enthusiastic, gaining and maintaining strong relationships with organisations in both public and private sector throughout her period as Director and Lead trainer.
She designs as well as delivers bespoke training for organisations within areas of:
teamwork, positive attendance, performance management, developing leaders, and building resilience, using a range of assessment tools to tackle work place stressors.
Jane is a licensed Specialist Practitioner in Motivational maps; this tool can build business success by improving staff and team motivation.


Bev McKay
Training and Development Consultant
Bev is an experienced well being Practitioner designing, delivering and developing tailored training and therapy to meet the needs of individuals and organisations across all sectors. She has twelve years’ experience as a trainer, specialising in well being and stress management in the work place, teaching stress awareness skills to public and private sector managers and employees.
She has excellent interpersonal skills enabling her to connect with people at all levels in an organisation. Bev is enthusiastic and highly motivated and uses these qualities, together with her clear communication with proven management skills, to motivate others. She is a Licensed Practitioner in Motivational Maps
Graham Ravenscroft
Associate Trainer
Graham Ravenscroft is a high ranking Great Britain Athletics Team Coach and is a UKA National Coach Mentor to a number of coaches on the National Coach Development Programme. Alongside his sport, Graham has also worked extensively developing performance in the world of business. He provides bespoke motivational goal setting and performance strategy presentations and workshops to businesses.


John Kemp
Associate Trainer
John gained over 25 years experience of leadership, management, training design and delivery in the Military and Operational Fire Service. A former National Public Speaking Champion, he has an OCR Diploma in Stress Management and is a member of the International Stress Management Association. He has delivered programmes in Stress Management,Personal Resilience and Well-Being to organisations across all sectors.

Linda du Preez
Associate Trainer
Linda has recently joined Premier Life skills. She has worked within the healthcare sector both as an Occupational Therapist and manager for over 20 years. Linda brings varied work experiences and training with her. She has worked within the UK, South African and American Healthcare systems, working with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Linda’s desire for promoting and training others in well-being stems from the experiences she has had as a manager observing the impact of stress on herself and others. Her passion is fuelled by her fascination with understanding the effects of stress on the brain.
Dr Abi Lucas
Associate Trainer
Abi is both an Associate Fellow and Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society.
She is a trained Psychologist working in research, clinical and occupational psychology. She is also a trustee of the International Stress Management Association, providing expert advice and guidance on resilience and stress.
C.Psychol, AFBPsS, PhD, MSc, BSc
PGCert in Evidenced-based Psychology Practice
Diploma in Coaching
Full Member of Division of Occupational Psychology and Division of Clinical Psychology


Andy Romero-Birkbeck
Associate Trainer
Andy is a health and wellbeing professional of over 15 years. Having started out in Health Clubs he moved into Private Health Screening on graduating from Leeds Met in 2007. Andy quickly progressed from his role as a Health Advisor for BUPA to Regional Trainer for Nuffield Health in 2009. In 2010 Andy moved back into fitness working as an Academy Tutor delivering Fitness and Personal Trainer courses around the UK. In 2012 Andy set up his own company while also working as an Associate Trainer for a number of providers including Premier Life Skills.
Andy works closely with a number of national organisations delivering high quality health screening, wellbeing training and can often be found speaking at HR events for the CIPD on his favourite topic – Employee Wellbeing.
- BSc (hons) Health Related Exercise & Fitness
- BTEC National Diploma in Sport, Health & Fitness
- Certificate in Personal Training
- Nutrition Level 3
- Health Screening Level 3
Angela Jowitt
Director, Dolphin Team Development Ltd
BSc (Hons) Psychol, MSc
Angela is an experienced team and leadership development professional, executive coach and published author. In her role as Faculty member at Ashridge Business School, she has had the privilege of working with leaders from around the world in both public and private sector.
Her main field of expertise is in team development, team coaching and experiential learning. Her academic interest led her to create a holistic model of experiential learning that focuses on thinking, feeling and doing which she has presented at international conferences and is featured in a new book ‘How to Coach your Team’ written with co-authors Pam Jones and Viki Holton. The book has been nominated for the CIM 2017-18 business book of the year award.
Her other teaching work is in soft-skills of leadership including developing impact, presence, self-confidence, influencing and authentic leadership. She has latterly developed a strong interest in wellbeing in the workplace, and how leaders can create teams that pay genuine attention to this important issue.
Angela’s business experience has been in the retail sector, tourism and export sales and marketing, where she focused on key account management and leading remote sales teams in the food and packaging industry. She remains an Adjunct faculty member at Ashridge Business School, and is Director of her own business, Dolphin Team Development founded in 2016.

Rachel Watson
Wellbeing Consultant
Rachel Watson has worked with many of the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies advising on wellbeing programmes. Her clients have also included Barclays Bank PLC, Barnardos, QVC and Moneysupermarket.com. Rachel is committed to changing the culture of business in the UK so that people look forward to coming to work and are motivated to contribute their best.
Passionate about the importance of wellbeing and empowerment, Rachel knows first hand, how this significantly impacts on efficiency, productivity and ultimately profit. She has helped turn around underperforming teams; in one case, in a team of 80 people, reducing headcount by 7% whilst both improving productivity of agents by 40% and decreasing absenteeism from 17% to 5% in 4 months.
30 years experience within the corporate arena, more than 10 years and over 4,500 hours experience as a coach, 10 years experience as a consultant and trainer. Relevant qualifications include: Accredited Executive Coach with the Association for Coaching with Accredited Coaching Diploma (distinction). Qualified Stress Management Practitioner, membership of the Stress Management Society, Resilience Trainer certified by Professor Mowbray, NLP Practitioner accredited by INLPTA, training in mental health and member of the Institute for Learning.
Helen Buri
As an independent occupational therapist and case manager, I have been in private practice since 2005, more recently working with young adults with severe brain injury, in conjunction with a multidisciplinary team. I assess and treat clients with a range of disabilities throughout Scotland. In addition to brain injury these include people with orthopaedic injuries including multiple trauma and hand injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations, adults with cerebral palsy and adults with visual impairment. I have experience of working with young disabled adults in the transition from childhood to adulthood. I regularly undertake independent assessments to advise clients on the purchase of equipment, adaptations and transport and I have experience of advising on housing adaptations including equipment required for home hydrotherapy pools and sensory rooms.
I am a qualified Functional Capacity Evaluator in which I assess clients’ abilities to return to work after injury and I have a growing caseload in this field. In addition I am a certified ‘people moving and handling’ trainer.
I regularly undertake assessments and prepare reports for tribunal hearings in the appeal of Personal Independence Payments and Employment Support Allowance. For each of these areas of practice I use a range of standardised tools and assessment protocols to objectively measure clinical outcomes.


Ben Richardson
Associate Trainer
Ben has been working in health and wellbeing professionally for over 17 years. Having started out as an Exercise Consultant at Virgin Active in Leeds Ben moved into professional sports performance working with Leeds United Football Club, Castleford Tigers and Leeds Rhinos.
Ben spent over seven years working as a Territory Manager and Product Trainer in the Pharmaceutical industry. This gave him experience of working with a variety of healthcare professionals including Medical Consultants and Specialist Nurses
For the last 5 years Ben has been working as a Corporate Trainer. He has delivered workshops, executive performance coaching and health biometric checks with many large companies in the fields of banking, communication and the energy sector in both the UK and Ireland.
Qualifications:
- HND – Sport and Exercise Management
- BA (Hons) degree – Sports Management/Sports Science
- Diploma in Exercise and Health Management
- Level 3 Active IQ Personal Trainer
Sue Jones
Sue has studied pre-clinical medicine and has BSc/ MSc degrees in both Physiology (2:1 Bristol university) and Public Management (Warwick Business School).
This coupling of medical and business knowledge allows her to train business managers to be more more aware of the impacts of ill-health and sub-optimal wellbeing on performance, and ultimately staff turnover.
Sue is qualified in Occupational Health and in conducting health assessments. She is a also a NLP coach, an ‘Xpert’ in diabetes and a first aider in physical and mental health.


John Perry
Associate Trainer
John has a solid commercial knowledge gained through his work as a consultant, trainer and coach and as Managing Director of the UK’s first nationwide student counselling company (‘Counselling for Effective Learning’). He has delivered coaching, facilitation and consultancy to a wide range of world-class organisations, including financial services, media, manufacturing, government, policing, and health services.
John has particular expertise in the areas of Psychological Wellbeing, Stress Management & Resilience Values Exploration, Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Promoting Unconditional Self-Acceptance.
John holds 4 Masters’ degrees, including in Health Psychology & Psychotherapy, and Professional Certifications in Coaching, Counselling, Hypnotherapy, Existential Analysis, Reality Therapy, Transactional Analysis, NLP, Personal Construct Psychology, Group Work and Supervision.

People 1st Approved Trainers
Margaret Rose-Reid
Associate Trainer
Margaret is a highly skilled Learning and Development Specialist with over 25 years experience. She has worked successfully with a diverse range of companies in both the public and private sectors. Extremely passionate about developing others, Margaret always delivers participative, enjoyable and effective learning solutions with enthusiasm and professionalism.
Her qualifications include a Diploma in Human Resources, Training and Development. She is also a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and certified user of the Discus DISC personality profiling system.
Margaret is licensed to deliver the People 1st nationally approved Practical Training Certificate ( PTC), Group Training Certificate (GTC) and Management 1st programmes


Quentin Ross-Smith
Associate Trainer
Quentin is a highly experienced learning and management development consultant. He has over thirty years experience working in both the public and private sectors and can therefore offer a wide breadth of experience and knowledge.
He is passionate and highly committed to everything he does. He believes that learning should be developmental, participative and enjoyable. He is always looking at new ways to enhance the learning experience to help the participant’s progress in the future, which in turn will be beneficial to the organisation they are working for.
Tim Ripper
Associate Trainer
Tim is an experienced Learning & Development specialist with extensive knowledge and skills in design, development and implementation of a wide range of training solutions. Tim is licenced to deliver the People 1st nationally approved Practical Training Certificate (PTC) and Group Training Certificate (GTC). He also delivers a range of soft skills including Management Development and Customer Care skills.

Our Quality Improvement Partners
SaksQISarah Armstrong-Klein
Quality Improvement & Training Consultant
Sarah brings a wealth of skills and over 30 years of both clinical and managerial experience working with people in the NHS across England. Working in Quality Improvement and with Government policy directives, Sarah has been engaged in activities to stimulate and deliver change, improvement and transformation across healthcare systems.
Managing and delivering both small and large scale sustainable change is complex. With a wide skill set and extensive training Sarah has supported teams and individuals through personal, workplace and organisational change using research based improvement science and validated methodologies across a wide range of services and with multiple organisations. Trained as a Patient Safety Executive by the renowned Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, MA, USA, Sarah has a particular interest in supporting the development of learning cultures within organisations at every level. Currently, Sarah is working as an independent Consultant in collaboration with Premier Life Skills delivering solutions across industry settings. Sarah is a Licensed Practitioner in Motivational Maps.

Get in Touch
If you would like any more information or would like to get in touch, feel free to give us a call or use the contact form below.