Trainer Biographies

Richard brings a blend of PR, HR, training and coaching experience to the Amber mix and heads up the Training and HR divisions within the Group.

Having spent ten years as a PR Consultant, Richard succumbed to his entrepreneurial instincts in 2003 and launched Argyll HR, a consultancy specialising in helping creative service companies to grow.

Many of Richard’s clients say he is not your typical HR professional in that he brings a practical and commercial edge to every service he delivers. This approach sees him retained by a significant number of creative service firms including some of the largest and fastest growing PR agencies around.

Richard is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development, qualified trainer and coach, Accredited Insights Discovery™ Practitioner and an Affiliate of the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). He has trained hundreds of PR professionals in more than fifty agencies since 2003 and is frequently retained as a performance coach by middle and senior managers.

In addition to the media sector, Richard works with a range of service businesses including medical practices, investment companies, technology firms and trade associations.

When not helping others to achieve their potential, Richard can be found trying to juggle the mutually exclusive tasks of becoming a competent golfer and spending time with his family in West Sussex.

A former journalist with 12 years on regional and national titles including the Daily Mirror, Ken Deeks moved into in-house PR in 1987 before working in - and running - a number of agencies for the next 15 years.

Ken was the founder of Arrow PR before becoming managing director of Kaizo. During his tenure as MD, the company was listed on the Ofex Exchange (as Argyll) and was awarded Ofex Company of the Year in 1998. Ken has directed a wide range of clients including Motorola, Fujitsu and Corel.

Ken left Kaizo in 2003 and for the past six years had been providing a mix of communications and training services as part of The Amber Group to both corporate clients and PR agencies. These services have included strategic selling workshops, presentation coaching, networking and negotiation training and business development programmes.

Ken is also the founder and driver of Byte Night, the IT industry's largest charity event in which people from the industry are sponsored to sleep out for one night. So far Byte Night has raised over £2m for Action for Children (formerly NCH) which provides support for homeless and vulnerable children.

Paul draws on his 20 year career as a journalist and PR consultant for his specialist training in the areas of Media Writing and Spokesperson Training, PR Strategy Development and Presentation Coaching. After 5 years training and working on UK regional and evening newspapers as a journalist and news editor, Paul moved to in-house PR roles, where he handled community relations and crisis communications for some of the largest media and telecom companies installing the infrastructure for today’s internet services.

Paul then brought his passion for straight-forward, matter of fact communication to PR consultancy where he advised some of the leading technology companies in the world including T-Mobile, Siemens, Oracle and HP. He also completed a two-year role as strategic communication adviser to the Government - a role he claims was one of the toughest of his career being anything but straight-forward and matter of fact.

Today, he trains and coaches PR consultants from many of the most creative and largest agencies in the country, as well as in-house staff.

Liz is no stranger to the consultancy world. After working for a number of years as a public relations consultant in the UK and USA, Liz transferred her skills into Human Resources, becoming a CIPD- qualified HR adviser to small and medium-sized businesses from a range of sectors including advertising, design, retail and recruitment.

At Amber, Liz combines her HR expertise and understanding of the professional services environment to design and implement training solutions that get right to the heart of clients' people issues and deliver real commercial impact. Participants in Liz's courses and workshops are challenged to apply their learning to real-life work situations via case studies, role plays and group problem-solving, giving them the skills and confidence to make an immediate difference upon their return to the workplace.

Outside of The Amber Group, Liz spends her time trying to improve her fitness levels to help her keep pace with her young, but fast-growing sons.