Julie Cunningham - Director
I was born and bred in Liverpool, and have rejected all inducements to leave. After studying for a degree in Applied Biology (Graduating in 1991 with a BSc Hons IIi) at Liverpool JMU, I was awarded funding from an outside company to study for a PhD, researching the microbiology of engineering fluids. Three and a half years later, following the death of my supervisor, and finding myself short of publishable results, I reluctantly cut my losses and at 26, got my first proper job.
I spent the next 18 months as a pharmaceutical sales representative visiting GPs, pharmacists and hospital doctors promoting a range of drugs. The technical selling gave me a real buzz, but sitting waiting in GP’s waiting rooms for hours at a time was mind numbing – it confirmed, I need to be busy all the time.
I then returned to my research roots, and was appointed Regional Orthopaedic Audit Co-ordinator in January 1996. I was based at Wrightington Hospital and worked with Martyn Porter. The position involved setting up and maintaining a database of information regarding hip and knee replacements carried out in the North West Region. A major part of the role was to recruit surgeons and then co-ordinate information from them using a specially designed questionnaire to collect patient and surgical information. Patient questionnaires were designed to further research into rates of joint failure and patient quality of life. My love of delivering presentations was rewarded by being given the highest score from attending delegates for a presentation at the National Clinical Audit Conference in 1996.
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In 1997 I had my first son, followed swiftly by a daughter in 1998 and another son in 2001. With three children under 4 and a husband who worked 200 miles away, I managed to postpone a family relocation to southern counties. When redundancy became an option for George, we decided to capitalise on the opportunity and set up a business consultancy using our joint pharmaceutical and IT experience.
ForwardPlan-IT was born, and as our skill set expanded, our work became more focused on NLP, so we naturally evolved into NLP Liverpool Ltd – it was important that our name reflected what we did and where we are.
Being a director of NLP Liverpool is a fantastic opportunity and a great challenge. I have the flexibility of being able to schedule my own time (something I have done for most of my working life) and means I can be available for the ever increasing taxi requirements of a parent with teenage children with full diaries of extracurricular activities. This often requires a large reserve of “midnight oil” although at the moment, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My role is to ensure the smooth running of all our services, from corporate training courses to private client sessions. I regularly monitor the delivery of our training courses, and am involved with the client from first contact through to final certification. My role extends to keeping abreast of developments in business information, meaning I can now fix most website glitches, and have recently dipped my toe into developing our website and marketing activities further using a little bit of HTML.
I love fresh air and walking on the beach, and am a keen photographer and card-maker. I have been known to write the occasional poem when the mood takes me, and have been known to stand up at The Dead Good Poets Society in Liverpool and recite the odd verse or two. I have recently dusted off my clarinet after 25 years and joined Maghull Wind Orchestra, proving you're never too old or too busy to do what you love.
We did a great deal of research into NLP before undertaking any training courses and had come across a confusing array of governing bodies and training institutes offering certification under their own banner. We wanted to make sure that the training we received was delivered by an institute that offered an internationally recognised certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Richard Bandler and John Grinder, co-creators of NLP, founded The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in 1978 and it is the first and largest NLP certification, training, validation and quality control organisation in the world. Richard personally trains, assesses and certifies all Society of NLP Trainers (including George), and it is for this reason that we decided to ensure that our training courses are certified by The Society of NLP. In fact, Richard signs all our certificates personally and George regularly assists him, John La Valle and Kathleen La Valle at their international trainings in London.
We are proud to be the first NLP training institute in Liverpool to offer NLP training certified by Richard Bandler and The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and our display of the society’s logos is your guarantee of the quality of our training.