Tara Kimbrell Cole
Founding CEO and Executive Coach
Tara Kimbrell Cole is a corporate coach to business leaders, chief officers, managing directors and executives preparing for senior leadership roles. She is approved by The Council of Trustees of The Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), Cambridge, MA, USA, chaired by Peter Senge Ph.D. as a consultant member and accepted member in the SoL Coaches Community of Practice. Her clients range from major multinationals such as BHP Billiton to Standard Chartered Bank, and medium sized organizations.

With a history as a chief executive, entrepreneur and serial financial innovator (grantee of patents), she is experienced and qualified in assisting clients across a range of industries in maximizing business opportunities through the development of genuine leadership, Innovation Capital® and sustainable profitability. She facilitates the integration of economic, social, environmental and governance thought.

As an executive coach, Tara has focused her work on the development of leaders' self awareness and personal mastery to facilitate collaboration and aligned vision which delivers corporate profitability and sustainable economic value through the deepening awareness of whole systems and the broader context of markets, community and environment.

As a senior executive, Tara was called on to make leadership decisions. With 29 years of experience in solving complex problems and delivering cutting edge solutions, in the U.S.A., Europe and Asia, She recognizes that leaders do not necessarily access all their skills, strengths and resources. Often some of their greatest capabilities lay dormant or latent. Her coaching is designed to support executives in realizing themselves to deliver their best performance.

With her international experience as a chief executive and member of the board of directors, she has utilised coaching as a practical method of implementation in business, executive development and whole systems solution delivery in challenging, fluid operational environments.

Tara's experience in business innovation and systems thinking is the genesis of her coaching. She engages a multi-dimensional approach which includes a systems perspective methodology supported by combination of expertise derived from business, innovation, finance, clinical psychology and coaching to deliver sustainable value to her clients.

An Alumna and Fellow of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2003-present, Tara utilises a range of methodologies and practices acquired through her experience, including:

• Currently obtaining a Master's Degree in coaching with Middlesex University
• Society for Organizational Learning Coaching Community of Practice's Coaching from a Systems Perspective. http://www.solonline.org/ConsultingAndPrograms/coaching/
• Certificated studies in Coaching from a Systems Perspective by the SoL Coaching Community of Practice.
• Member of the Presencing Institute graduates community at MIT
• Solution Focused Coach certification from the Canadian Council of Professional Certification.
• Certificated studies at The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), Greensboro, N.C. USA.
• Credentialed and accredited as a coach by the International Coach Federation.
• Certified in the administration the leading assessment and psychometric instruments including Lominger, Benchmarks® 360, Skillscope® 360, Firo-B, Hogan and Meyer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)

She has served as a member of the executive council of the International Coach Federation, Singapore, the executive committee of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Singapore and is an active member in other local and international professional organizations.

She is the author of a seminal white paper on generating corporate profitability and shareholder value from executive diversity.

She speaks frequently at conferences on this, related issues, innovation and Sustainability, including:

• in 2008 at the TBLI (Triple Bottom Line Investment) Conference™, Asia
• in 2006 at the first International Consultation & Master-Planning for the Development of the Knowledge Economy in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam
• in 2005 at The Global Summit of Women in Mexico City.

Tara is the founder and a Member of the Board of Directors of Global Trade Finance Network Pte. Ltd., a software company with patented international trade finance product, www.tradefinancenetwork.com. The chairman of the board of GTFNet was the late Mr. Rodney D. Galpin the former chairman & CEO of Standard Chartered Bank and executive director of the Bank of England.

In 1994, she founded International Aval Asia Ltd. ("IAA"), which was first to introduce non-recourse export receivable finance to exporters and local banks in the Asian market and the secondary distribution of these cross border receivables generated in Asia. IAA was the exclusive Asia representative of BB Aval GmbH ("BBA") for over four years, the export finance (forfaiting) subsidiary of Berliner Bank, Germany, USD 6.5 billion capital. By 1996 BB Aval had become one of the largest traders of Indonesian assets in the forfaiting market.

In 1981, Tara founded Interdiscount Ltd., a boutique merchant banking company in New York specializing in the financing of letters of credit and insurance company guarantees generated from private placement investments which company was the first in its market to offer fixed rate financing.

Contact: tkc@synovations.com

Patricia Longueuil
Director of Business Development
Patricia Longueuil, Director of Business Development, is a seasoned business development executive with 25 years of experience.

As Vice President of McCreight & Company, Inc., (www.implementstrategy.com) a leading boutique consulting firm in the United States specialized in strategy implementation, Ms. Longueuil focused on the implementation of creative practice development processes and the successful launch of the company's Research and Operations Center. During her tenure, she significantly increased the number of Alliance Partners as well as clients, which included the members of Boards of Directors, CEOs and senior management teams of Fortune 100 companies.

Previously Ms. Longueuil served General Electric and Stauffer Chemical Company (currently division of Unilever Plc.) in various management roles, in which she implemented creative business development solutions. Ms. Longueuil also utilized her business development talent in the launching of companies in the bio-tech and food service sectors at Care Technologies and Diversified Hospitality Group.

Ms. Longueuil has been a member of the Board of Directors and served as Chairman of several 
not-for-profit organizations, including Keystone House and Seymour-Oxford Nursery Child Care Association, Connecticut, USA and is an active member in professional organizations, which include Who's Who in Executive Women, USA.

Ms. Longueuil received a Bachelor of General Studies from the University of Connecticut, USA.

Contact: pl@synovations.com

Rodney D. Galpin

Synovations deeply regrets the unexpected passing of its revered and invaluable advisor, Mr. Rodney D. Galpin on 6 October 2011 in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Galpin's accomplishments included having been the Chairman and CEO of Standard Chartered Bank and Executive Director of the Bank of England. He was a man of great foresight and vision, with a far reaching understanding of the value and meaning of life, innovation and leadership. His stalwart support of Synovations was a guiding light and inspiration for all at Synovations.

Mr. Galpin also served as the Chairman of the Board of Global Trade Finance Network Pte. Ltd. Form 2001-2011. Amongst his other trusted roles, Mr. Galpin is an Officer of the Order of St John, Freeman of the City of London, Life Governor of Haileybury, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and the British Institute of Management, Council Member of The Scout Association and Trustee of various charitable trusts, President of The Banker Club (1992-93).

Mr. Rodney D. Galpin's Obituary
The Telegraph, London, 13 November 2011

Rodney Galpin, who has died aged 79, was a Bank of England official much admired for his skill in pouring oil on troubled waters – an attribute that was notably deployed in the rescue of Johnson Matthey Bankers and in his later chairmanship of Standard Chartered.

It was said of Galpin that the more difficult the situation, the better he handled it. Tall, handsome, well-mannered and well-groomed, he was absolutely unflappable in a crisis. If he was neither a strategic thinker nor an innovator, he was a good listener and a shrewd builder of teams.

His style could be oblique – "Until you knew him well, you could never tell when he disagreed with you," a colleague once observed – but produced the right results. In short, he was the Bank's safest pair of hands.

Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB) was the banking subsidiary of an old-established London dealer in gold bullion. It had ventured into lending on a scale far beyond prudence to a gaggle of unsuitable customers, the largest of whom was a Pakistani shipowner known as "the Cobra".

When JMB reached the point of collapse in September 1984, with bad loans amounting to more than twice its capital, the Bank of England had to decide urgently whether to save it or let it fall, at risk of provoking a run on other banks.

A rescue was mounted; the Bank bought JMB for £1; and Galpin, then an associate director on the administrative side of the Bank, was sent in as executive chairman. He swiftly sacked the top three executives, recruited their replacements, steadied the ship and returned to the Bank to take over as head of the banking supervision department, which had been heavily criticised for failing to spot JMB's weaknesses earlier.

More controversy was to follow when it was revealed that the Bank had subsequently injected £100 million into JMB without telling the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson – who reacted with fury and instigated an inquiry into the Bank's handling of the whole affair. "We should have been more alert to the political sensitivities," Galpin later said, with some understatement.

If the Bank's reputation was dented by the JMB episode, Galpin's was not. Promoted to executive director, he played a key role, alongside a new statutory board of advisers, in strengthening the supervisory function. And in 1988 his skills were called upon for another high-profile external role as chairman of Standard Chartered, the overseas bank formed by the 1969 merger of Standard, which operated largely in Africa, and Chartered, whose fiefdom was the Far East.

The group's fortunes had been rocky for some years. In an attempt to reduce dependence on old colonial territories, it had overexpanded in Europe and North America and had suffered heavy loan losses after the early 1980s recession. A takeover bid from Lloyds Bank in 1986 had been resisted by bringing in three powerful Asian "white knight" shareholders, while internal tensions persisted from the original merger.

The culture was very different from that of the Bank of England, but again Galpin gradually won through with a combination of determination, affability and careful man-management. Though often rumoured as a takeover target, Standard Chartered retained its independence and had put most of its troubles behind it by the time Galpin retired in 1993.

Rodney Desmond Galpin was born on February 5 1932 into a family of courtiers. His father, later Sir Albert Galpin, entered the Royal household in 1934 and became secretary to the Lord Chamberlain's office and serjeant-at-arms to the Queen. Albert and his wife Vera were the "adopted son and daughter" of Percy Armytage, a gentleman usher to Edward VII, who made his name as London's first professional party organiser, specialising in managing hospitality for visiting foreign potentates.

Rodney was educated at Haileybury and joined the Bank of England in 1952 after National Service. His courtly style as well as obvious competence marked him out among the Bank cadets of the era, and in 1962 he was appointed private secretary to the Governor, the outspoken 3rd Earl of Cromer – a patrician from the Baring dynasty and the youngest Governor for 200 years.

Galpin was at Cromer's side through a series of sterling crises and confrontations in Downing Street with Harold Wilson, who felt obliged on one occasion to ask: "Who is prime minister of this country, Mr Governor, you or me?"

If Galpin was sometimes able to soften the impact of Cromer's style within the Bank, he could not do so in the public arena, and it came as no surprise when Wilson declined to renew Cromer's tenure at the end of 1966. Galpin moved on to join the Bank's Discount Office under the tutelage of its celebrated principal, Hilton Clarke, who was the personification of "the Governor's eyebrows" – the informal mechanisms by which the Bank policed the money markets.

Galpin became deputy principal of the Discount Office, in due course advancing to deputy chief cashier. He was increasingly involved in banking supervisory work, and was in the thick of the action in the secondary bank crisis which began with the collapse of London & County Securities in late November 1973 and the rescue of Cedar Holdings a few days later.

It was Galpin, deputising for the chief cashier James Keogh, who chaired the meeting at which a wider initiative was first mooted in which the high street banks might be brought together to support other small lenders afflicted by a crash in property values. From that discussion emerged the "Lifeboat" – perhaps the most successful rescue scheme ever assembled in the City.

From 1978 Galpin was responsible for the Bank's administration as Chief of Establishments. This included personnel, and it fell to him to manage the redundancy or redeployment of 750 staff involved in "exchange control", the regulatory restrictions on cross-border movements of currency by UK citizens and businesses which were abolished by the incoming Thatcher government in 1979.

At a time of low morale in the Bank, he also had to implement an internal restructuring which followed a report by Lord Croham as adviser to the Governor, Gordon Richardson. As ever, Galpin fulfilled these tasks with a courtesy and aplomb that rarely left anyone feeling bruised or unheard.

After retiring from Standard Chartered, Galpin was chairman of Alpha Airports Group (an in-flight catering business); the Global Trade Finance Network; the Look Ahead housing association in central London; and the Independent Review Body on banking practice. He was a director of P&O, the private bankers Cater Allen and Capital Shopping Centres.

He was a life governor of Haileybury, a council member of St George's House, Windsor, and a member of the Order of St John. A man of quiet but firm faith, he was an assiduous supporter of his parish church of St Peter's at Knowl Hill, in Berkshire.

Galpin also inherited from his father and adoptive grandfather an enthusiasm for scouting, and was a long-serving council member of the Scout Association. He played rugby for the Bank as a young man, and in later life enjoyed tennis and gardening.

Rodney Galpin married, in 1956, Sylvia Craven, who survives him with their son and daughter.

Rodney Galpin, born February 5 1932, died October 6 2011

All our executive coaches are aligned methodologically, in practice process and 'ground of being'. Each has been approved by the Council of Trustees as a consultant member of the Society for Organizational Learning (Founding SoL), chaired by Peter M. Senge Ph.D.

With a team of more than forty, synovations® has the capacity to service substantial undertakings through its executive coach capability, strategically located in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. We provide our services in ten languages through consultants speaking in their native tongues.

Languages include among others English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish. Many of synovations® coaches are bi-lingual and tri-lingual.

Each member of our team has the ability to coach integrated economic, social and environmental thinking that generates Sustainable Profitability®.

Mature business experience in either a functional management role or at the strategic level is a core characteristic of our executive coaches, which business acumen is clearly designated for our clients' consideration.

The following is a sample of our capability.

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