The people behind Challenge of Change.
ABOUT
Helen Willetts and Anna Epps are the Managing Partners of Challenge of Change, helping leaders and organisations turn pressure into performance rather than stress.
Helen Willetts
Helen Willetts has spent more than 20 years working at the heart of major businesses, helping leaders navigate change, build stronger cultures and bring their people with them, even when it’s tough.
A former Director of Internal Communications at BT Group and senior leader at HSBC, Helen has advised CEOs and executive teams through some of the most complex commercial, cultural and reputational challenges organisations can face. She's led large-scale culture change, helped reshape the relationship between businesses and their employees, and developed new approaches to change grounded in an understanding of how people actually think, feel and behave.
More recently, Helen has advised major businesses including Howden Insurance and M&S on strategic communications and organisational change.
Helen is passionate about the human side of business performance: how leaders create the conditions for people to think clearly, embrace change and thrive under pressure, and how organisations can unlock extraordinary results by understanding what really drives human behaviour.
Anna Epps
Anna Epps is Managing Partner of Challenge of Change, bringing more than 20 years' experience in business transformation, organisational change and strategic communications across major corporations and management consultancies.
Most recently, Anna led Internal Communications at Rolls-Royce, following senior leadership roles at BT Group spanning corporate affairs, business transformation, strategy and communications. Her earlier career at Deloitte and Moorhouse gave her a strong foundation in helping complex organisations turn ambitious strategies into meaningful, sustainable change.
Across these roles, Anna has led major transformation programmes, developed multi-year change strategies and worked alongside senior leadership teams to shape organisational culture, improve collaboration and build the conditions for successful change.
Her experience combines the strategic rigour of management consulting with the practical realities of leading change from within some of the UK's largest businesses.
Anna is particularly passionate about bridging the gap between strategy and human behaviour: helping leaders understand what enables people to respond positively to challenge, navigate uncertainty and deliver their best when it matters most.
Dr Derek Roger
Dr Derek Roger qualified originally in psychology, but the emphasis in his work subsequently shifted towards neuroscience.
His ground-breaking research, mainly at the University of York in England and later at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, has made him one of the world's leading experts on resilience and stress management. Derek applies his significant experience at the cutting edge of neuroscience and psychology to working situations in an insightful and commercially relevant manner.
Drawing on his expertise, Derek initiated an innovative programme of research on stress and health at the University of York, where he established the internationally-renowned Stress Research Unit. The Unit was funded continuously for over 20 years by research grants and attracted a significant number of UK and international visiting researchers.
Findings from the research have been published in over 120 journal articles, books and keynote conference presentations. Derek has also led a number of applied, controlled-trial case studies on Challenge of Change Resilience Training Programme to demonstrate the impact of the training. These can be seen in the Evidence section.