Events

Testimonials for Energise events & talks – delegates 

• “Thank you so much for talking and sharing your advice on Tuesday evening at Shoreditch House. I’ve actually received quite a few messages from SheSays members saying how much they enjoyed it and it was the best event they’ve been to in a while. And that’s all down to the amazing speakers, so thanks for your time and effort. Would love to collaborate in the future, so please stay in touch.” Casey Bird, events organiser, SheSays global digital women’s network.
• “Feedback from all attendees was overwhelmingly positive. She understands our industry and individual brands, works well with women of all levels of experience and has an approach which is both light of touch whilst simultaneously rigorous and effective.“

Nancy Rowe, Head of Insight, Sapient Razorfish and Publicis Groupe VivaWomen! UK co-chair.

• “The feedback from the evaluation forms is excellent with comments like; ‘very useful – I have practical things to go away and action’, ‘good balance of presentation and discussion’, ‘it met my expectations 120%’ and ‘very thought provoking.’” Lindsay Allen, Vice Chair, CIPD Thames Valley Branch.
• “I really enjoyed your presentations. Only wish the session could have been longer. I went into the event not knowing what to expect and not feeling very confident at all and came out buzzing and feeling full of hope and ideas! I’d already decided that this year I want to take some time to do some self-discovery and invest time for myself to work out what I’d like to do career wise, so meeting you was most serendipitous!” Jayne Nichol.
• “Thanks so much for the ‘Changing direction in the law’ seminar at the Law Society the other day, it was very interesting.”
• “You were inspirational at the seminar I attended at The Law Society”. Pauline Campbell.
• “Thank you for your inspiring talk last night. Loved the fun props!” Macki Maconie
• “I found your presentation, handouts and now the website all very inspiring and are making me excited about embarking on my next step.“ Lisa Farthing.
• “I would like to thank you once again for the delivery of your Career Strategies presentation, which I genuinely found to be inspiring and encouraging.” Helen Collins.
• “I really enjoyed your talk at Shoreditch House the other night.” Jade Tomlin
• “I really enjoyed your SheSays presentation – great insights and practical tips which were very useful.” Marc Boothe
• “I just wanted to thank you for the great advice you gave last night.” Lizzy Reid
• “Thank you for delivering a great workshop today. We have already received thank you e mails from our consultants and all were very complementary about you and the session.“
  Gislele Lambert, Head of Engagement, Obelisk Support
• “Many thanks for a great talk tonight; the points hit home with a lot of people. I feel inspired!” Jelena Madir, Senior Counsel, AWLL committee member.
• “Incredibly well prepared session – organised and knowledgeable. Surpassed my expectations”. Kate Forster.
• “Well organised and a good mix of presentation and dialogue in a short period.” J Cook.
• “Well facilitated. Rachel was a good speaker.” Emma Twining, DHL.
• “I really enjoyed the session, it was friendly, informal, informative and there was a real sense of enthusiasm and encouragement. It made me feel quite positive about developing a personal brand. I have been to a similar thing before where people felt quite inadequate and down because they weren’t doing/achieving X, Y, Z. This was the exact opposite.” Alison Tobin
• “Very personable, friendly, relaxed.” Suzy Ingram
• “The discussion was very thoughtful and well managed. Rachel was very engaging and funny.” Laura Spence.
• “Really engaging and encouraging. Fun.” Victoria Pearson.
• “The activities were really interactive and thought provoking. Really enjoyed how Rachel facilitated discussion and encouraged lively debate. Rachel packed a lot of useful activity into the time available. Great, energetic, valuable.” Simon Butt-Bethlendy.
• “She was great. Loved the props! It has been extremely useful and thought-provoking.” Gerda Pincinte
• “Really fun, interactive, informal approach works really well.” Laura Taylor
• It was very well prepared and presented. Rachel has a great manner which makes what could be a difficult subject seem much more manageable.” Anne Whitehouse
• “I thought it was really engaging. Great workshop.” Naomi Holdaway
• “Engaging throughout. My attention never wandered. Just the right amount of her personal story. Up to date. Her knowledge about future recruitment trends feels very sound. Enjoyed the props!” Elizabeth Underwood.
• “Confidently presented and had the right tone.” Ella Bedrock
• “Very approachable, good at generating discussion. Also very thought provoking. Thank you for a very interesting session!” Christine Richardson
• “There was such a good balance between professional input, advice and understanding and shared experience relating to extremely sensitive issues which few people feel comfortable about raising in the workplace. I left the event definitely feeling empowered.” Chriso Christodoulou

Testimonials for Energise events and talks – network managers 

“Working with Rachel is a complete pleasure! She is so organised and efficient! Very structured and also flexible, warm and professional – a true mix of many talents. I would definitely recommend her for anyone’s team! She has written many blogs for us at Membership World, as well as organising one of our events to make it a true success. Thank you Rachel!”

Sandie McCoubrey, Member and Partner Support, Membership World.

“Rachel ran another session for SEAL and American Women Lawyers in London (AWLL) in September 2022 and she was very impressive. She spent more time than any speaker we have had (other than Lady Arden) on preparing for the talk, wanting to understand our audience, and custom tailoring it.  I’ve been very impressed with her.”

Marty Rolle, Chair, Society of English and American Lawyers (SEAL) and International Women’s Forum UK.

“Rachel is a very thorough focused individual and is relentless in her pursuit to do a good job for her clients. She helped enormously whilst she worked on the events and round table discussions and am pleased to recommend her.”

Gordon Glensister, Founder, Membership World.

“I inherited the provider relationship with Rachel Brushfield, ‘The Talent Liberator’ of Energise at the Law Society, and I am glad that I did. At the Women Lawyers Division of the Law Society, we consider Energise as a trusted partner. Rachel designs and delivers multiple career events each calendar year for us, including the Empowerment workshop in celebration of International Women’s Day, which achieved a 100% rating from delegates in 2018. She consistently delivers an excellent standard of service, has a high attention to detail, creates good quality interactive workshops with superb feedback from delegates, including being ‘real’ and ‘down to earth’, and she has a professional, positive, adaptable ‘can do’ attitude and an ability to put herself in the shoes of other people, invaluable for providing additional value to our diverse members, against a fast changing market backdrop. Rachel has supported our Returners course helping women and men over many years, to have a successful return to the profession, and was involved in its recent redesign to update the programme to better meet the needs of a broader audience for the digital age. She has also created high quality popular career webinars and articles to support and inspire Returners to return to the profession. With a large workload and multiple projects to deliver and stakeholders to influence, Rachel is a reliable asset to support me to help our network delivering and developing a high-quality schedule of both events and content for our members. She is well-regarded at the Law Society and also did workshops to support staff as part of Learning at work Week (LAWW) in 2018. Rachel is an experienced professional, requiring minimal supervision, an ideal candidate to utilise as a part time network manager, enhancing the reputation of your membership network.”

Alex Storer, Manager Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Expert at the Law Society.

“I have known Rachel for over 20 years and in that time have worked with her on a wide range of projects, predominantly in my role as Vice Chair (now Chair) of Thames Valley CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) Branch. In particular, for the last 4 years, Rachel has supported me directly with organising and delivering an annual half day career strategies conference for 20-40 Human Resources (HR) professionals. Rachel is a delight to work with. She is consistently reliable, proactive, has integrity (does what she says she is going to do) and is highly organised. A huge strength is her ability to anticipate and plan ahead in a logical and structured way. As a result, she is a highly valued member of the team, providing me with peace of mind in expedient event planning and management. In addition to the careers conference, Rachel has designed and delivered a number of different sessions for our Thames Valley CIPD Branch events over a number of years, which have been both practical and inspiring in nature, and always receiving very positive feedback from the delegates. Rachel’s support for the career strategies conferences has been invaluable and has included: sourcing and liaising with speakers, writing articles to promote the events for our Branch newsletter, creating awareness of the events on LinkedIn/Twitter using relevant images and copy, supporting me to prepare the venue for the arrival of guests and creating bespoke action planning sheets. Outside our CIPD activities, on a personal basis, I have also attended several events for the network that Rachel co-runs in Oxfordshire (PWHub for senior executives and professionals, with quarterly CPD style 2 hour events on various personal and professional development topics) and have found them both useful and enjoyable. Rachel is highly skilled at creating a relaxed yet productive environment for delegates to learn and build their network. I would have no hesitation in recommending Rachel as an experienced and competent event organiser and network manager.”

Lindsay Allen, chair of The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) Thames Valley branch and HR/OD Director and NED.

“I have known Rachel for over 10 years and we co-run a successful network together, PWHub, for professional women, which we set up together over three years ago. We host quarterly CPD style events for senior professional women employed from all sectors in companies in Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley. Rachel is incredibly organised and takes responsibility for suggesting original event topics, developing exercises for events, preparing goody bags for delegates, setting up the EventBrite page and marketing the events we do by e mailing lists with a bulletin about the event, posting about events on social media, updating lists with new contacts etc. She requires no supervision whatsoever, as she think and plans ahead, is independent but thinks in an inter-dependent way and is proactive in informing me of what is required of me, which, as I now work full-time, is invaluable.  It gives me peace of mind and allows me to be clear about my role at our events and fully engaged with our guests. Rachel would be a real asset supporting a network of professionals and designing and promoting their annual events programme.  She already has a wide network of her own, and is entirely comfortable making new contacts, and making proactive introductions across different sectors.  Her clients include the Law Society, as well as other membership organisations and women’s networks. In the digital age, many people claim that ‘they deliver’ but Rachel really does, which is clearly apparent from her own activities on social media platforms. I have no hesitation recommending her from my own experience as a former managing partner of a law firm, and used to lawyers with a high attention to detail and exacting standards.”

Julia Iball, my co-founder of PWHub – Professional Women’s Hub – Inspiring Professional Women and Senior Development Executive, University of Oxford.

“Many thanks for a great talk tonight; the points hit home with a lot of people. I feel inspired!” Jelena Madir, Senior Counsel, AWLL committee member.

“I am writing to thank you for your participation in the Training heads event at CMS Cameron McKenna. Your presentation was very well-received and I am most grateful for your time and contribution to the group.”

Myrian Stirling, LawNet Training and events

“Thank you so much for talking and sharing your advice on Tuesday evening. I’ve actually received quite a few messages from SheSays members saying how much they enjoyed it and it was the best event they’ve been to in a while. And that’s all down to the amazing speakers, so thanks for your time and effort. Would love to collaborate in the future, so please stay in touch.” Casey Bird, events organiser, SheSays global digital women’s network.

“VivaWomen! is Publicis Groupe’s global women’s network. The U.K. arm of the network engaged Rachel to deliver a series of coaching workshops for 80 women across brands within the Groupe designed for three separate career stages around three themes. Women with 2+ years were coached on the importance of developing their personal brand and ‘blowing their own trumpet’, those with 5+ years’ experience were delivered a confidence building workshop around ‘taming their imposter’ and those with 10+ years’ experience were fast tracked into career strategising. Feedback from all attendees was overwhelmingly positive across the Groupe. We consider Rachel to be strategic partner for our women’s network. She understands our industry and individual brands, works well with women of all levels of experience and has an approach which is both light of touch whilst simultaneously rigorous and effective.” Nancy Rowe, Head of Insight, Razorfish and Publicis Groupe VivaWomen! network UK chair.

Events by theme

Events with * are specifically for women

Career crossroads & choices

• Energise event. “Future-proof and take control of your career in 2021. Insights and tips”.
• EnergiseLegal event. “Career agility in law”. A Fireside chat with I.Stephanie Boyce, the Law Society Vice President, Morgan Wolfe and Olivia Streater.
• Energise event. “How to unlock opportunities in the unadvertised market. Insights and tips.”
• CIPD Thames Valley Autumn Conference for HR professionals “Career strategies for a disruptive world” (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)
• Energise “Steer your career” workshops, in association with DWP – for 150 executives from diverse professions/sectors over 18 months covering values, transferable skills, a portfolio career, marketing yourself and second careers.
• The Law Society “Returners course” – ‘Job search tips in the new legal market’ or ‘A good CV is like squeezing oranges’ * (various over 10 years bi-annual)
• Civvylisation – “Liberating your talent” career change event for personnel leaving the Forces, Oxford
• Oxford Job Fair “Career seminars” – marketing yourself, career change, CV and interview tips
• Publicis Groupe; VivaWomen’s network – “Career strategy and planning” *
• ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales ) – “Portfolio careers” & “Comeback Community” (women returners) *
• American Women Lawyers in London (AWLL) * “Career crossroads and workplace choices.“
• The Law Society (all divisions) – “Changing career direction”
• The Law Society Women Lawyers Division (WLD) * ‘Portfolio careers’
• Publicis Groupe, VivaWomen! network – “Career strategy”
• The Law Society Women Lawyers Division (WLD) * “Speed Networking”
• The Law Society (all divisions) “Career crossroads? Deciding the next chapter.”
• PWHub “Career breakthroughs”, ”Planning your future-proof career for a 100 year life”

Marketing yourself including personal branding and social media

• Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) London “Self-promotion” *
• The Commonwealth Club, London – “High impact low cost self-promotion”
• Charlbury Business Network – “Marketing yourself”
• Chippy Lippys Women’s Networking Group – “Self-promotion” *
• Energise -“Championing HR” lunch event – various
• Banbury Business Women – “Blowing your own trumpet”*
• Publicis Groupe; VivaWomen! network – “Blowing your own trumpet” *
• Publicis Groupe; VivaWomen! network – “Personal branding” *
• SheSays; (global digital women’s network) “Personal Branding”
• Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) “Personal Branding”
• English language teaching (ELT) “Annual conference- panellist”
• Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) London – “Personal branding and social media” *
• Barclays PLC Richmond – “Social media” for Managing Partners of law firms
• Association Women Solicitors (AWS) Surrey branch “Blowing your own trumpet” *
• Association Women Solicitors (AWS) Manchester “Blowing your own trumpet” *
• Wilmington Women – “Blowing your own trumpet” *
• South Cheshire Law Society – ”Personal branding”
• PWHub – “Personal styling to express your personal brand” *

 Talent management & employee engagement

• Publicis Groupe VivaWomen! network “Hi-potential needs analysis and bespoke talent development programme” *
• International Bar Association Global Women Lawyers * conference panel Paris, France “Engaging and motivating GenY in their careers”
• Energise and Purple House HR recruitment – “Insights and ideas to re-motivate talent”
• LawNet (a diverse group of junior & senior HR/Talent, Managing partners & Partners) – “Talent engagement”
• Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) Newbury –“Talent management”
• Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) Oxford – “Spotlight on HR talent ”
• South Warwickshire HR group – ‘Unlocking potential – engaging employees” talk
• LawNet annual Conference breakout session; “Impact of GenY on the legal profession.”
• The Law Society Law Management Section – People in Practice Conference: Retain talent and lead into success’ ‘Retention – how to keep your best talent and stay competitive?’

 Self-awareness, confidence, smart working and life planning

• The Law Society Women Lawyers Division (WLD) in celebration of International Women’s Day “Empowerment workshop” (2018, 2019)
• The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) – “Take a good look at yourself“ – 3 hour CPD workshop
• NHS Surrey and Sussex conference of HR managers and directors – “Energising tips for work and life” session
• ‘The Mushroom Club’ for senior female HR executives -“Smart working” with guests from Cap Gemini presenting the CIPD’s research and Reuters presenting their internal case study
• Oxfordshire Life magazine – “Life Coaching workshop” Malmaison Hotel, Oxford
• Inglewood Health Farm, Sussex “Life coaching” talk
• Ladies that lunch network – “Creating your success in the next 12 months” *
• Publicis Groupe, VivaWomen! network – “Confidence – managing your imposter syndrome and taming your gremlins”
• The Law Society Learning at work week (LAWW) “Confidence and impact”
• PWHub “Goodbye 2017, hello 2018”.

Leadership

• The Law Society – “Personal leadership – being the leader of your own life/career”
• Networking Women Northleach – “Personal leadership- being the leader of your own life/career”*
• Networking Women Abingdon – “Personal leadership- being the leader of your own life/career” *

Soft skills

• PWHub – “Saying no” *
• PWHub – “Difficult conversations” *
• PWHub – “Storytelling – the modern marketing tool” *
• PWHub – “Discover your inner creative genius” *

Other

• PWHub – “Making a difference” *
• PWHub – “CPD to future-proof your career” *

To discuss an Energise event for your organisation/network, please contact Rachel Brushfield: M +44 (0) 7973 911137