This is the second interview in the series, with Influencer Tribe member Rachel Eden. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed, Rachel!
1- Please could you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?
I am the Coordinating Director of Holy Brook Associates, our mission is to enable people to improve their organisations and communities – our team work with a wonderful range of clients from small charities to big multinationals offering consultancy, professional training and organise policy events. My personal specialisms are financial strategy and communications – two areas that are vital to improve the effectiveness of any organisation.
Another great privilege I have is being an elected representative on Reading Borough Council, representing part of my home town and part of the council’s governing group with special responsibility for Adult Social Care.
Do get in touch with me – Holy Brook tweets are at @HolyBrookLtd and my linkedin profile is here. I’m happy to connect to people if you explain why you want to!
2- How is influence important to what you do and what examples do you have about using influence in your life and work?
I always want to know that I’ve made a difference and changed things. I believe that the only way to make changes that are effective and sustainable is by working with people. In my political and my professional life it is sometimes possible to impose a solution but it is likely to be resisted and probably less effective that it could be by working together: I’m a great believer in common endeavour.
I am also a great believer in collaboration and my company would always rather partner to ensure we use the right expertise. Our policy events are a good example of this – this autumn we’re bringing together people from a wide range of backgrounds, both face to face and by using innovative and disruptive online tools to help people collaborate virtually. We’re doing this to come up with solutions to how we tackle some of the toughest challenges we face as a society from how we improve end of life and dying to how we use art and design to turn STEM into STEAM.
You can find a bit more about Holy Brook’s approach to events here: – to join us as an online collaborators or face to face
3- What message would you like to share with the other members of The Influence Expert community?
Give! Being a part of a community and contributing is enjoyable and worthwhile in itself. It is likely to be beneficial to you as well but the main motivation should be to help – influence is always for a purpose. I believe if you make your purpose using your expertise to make the world a better place you can’t go far wrong.
To learn more about the Influencer Tribe and the interview series, click here!
Let me know if you’d like to take part- and if you haven’t read the first interview in the series yet, you can find it here.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.