Vanessa Murray
Mentoring Circle Founder
vanessa.murray@mentoringcircle.co.uk
In her current role, Vanessa works as an Asset Manager for Stanhope Plc, a property developer and investor who deliver large scale commercial and mixed use construction projects across the UK. Prior to joining Stanhope Vanessa spent 8 years specialising in Property Management focussing on delivering operational excellence across high end commercial portfolios, stand alone assets and mixed use estates working for both Workman LLP and subsequently Savills as an Associate Director.
With a degree in music and no connections to the surveying world, her first few years working in property were particularly challenging. The difficulty of building a network from scratch and the lack of access to senior female leadership was the inspiration behind Mentoring Circle, an initiative that Vanessa founded to provide mentoring for junior women in the industry from women in senior leadership roles.
“I’ve worked with some really brilliant young women throughout my career who struggle to promote themselves leading to a lack of diversity at senior leadership level. I wanted to create an accessible platform for young women to connect with inspirational female leaders within the property industry at this key early stage of their career journey”.
Her ambition is to grow the programme in order to secure mentorship for any young woman working in the industry who isn’t already part of a structured training scheme.
Ceri Moyers
Mentoring Circle Director and Founder of Clarity Consulting
ceri.moyers@mentoringcircle.co.uk
Ceri was a mentor with Mentoring Circle in its first few years and joined as a Director in 2022. She is passionate about the opportunities for change that exist for the built environment via a more gender diverse workforce, and inspired by the role that Mentoring Circle can play in enabling this. In her role as Director, Ceri takes ownership for the ongoing development of Mentoring Circle’s annual programme, including the delivery of all coaching and training for both mentees and mentors. Vanessa and Ceri take joint responsibility for Mentoring Circle’s strategy and long-term growth, supported by their Advisory Board.
Ceri worked in corporate communications and client relations for the built environment sector for over 10 years before establishing her business, Clarity Consulting in 2020. Clarity helps individuals, teams and companies to become more effective by better understanding themselves, their customers and their clients. The business specialises in organisational development and professional coaching for individuals and groups.
Ceri is a professional coach with 10 years of individual and group coaching experience with clients across property, construction, law, finance, entertainment, infrastructure and advertising. She trained with the internationally recognised Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and is accredited with the EMCC. Her coaching approach is strengths based and borrows from the principles of positive psychology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Clients come to Ceri with widely differing challenges and pressures, but all seeking meaningful change. She helps individuals to discover their strengths, values and motivations as a foundation for greater impact and contentment, holds them accountable for change and champions them to succeed.
Flora Cowie
Mentoring Circle Marketing and Social Media Manager
Flora’s current role is at London Communications Agency, where she works on multiple client accounts in architecture and property. She has experience across the built environment industry, having previously worked at Stanhope in the marketing team on their social media and graphic design, and at Foster + Partners assisting in the architectural studios on award-winning projects.
Having grown up with parents as architects, Flora has seen the imbalance in gender across the sector from a young age. She wants to help profile women in this space and encourage young people into creative professions through different educational routes.
Flora is bringing new ideas to Mentoring Circle with her experience in social media management and content creation, events planning and brand building.
Jo Lewis
Mentoring Circle PA
Jo is our personal assistant and has over two decades of experience working in admin, technology and tight deadlines.
Jo supports the Mentoring Circle Team with a lot of the behind-the-scenes work.
