One of Yorkshire’s most prolific Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors, Rachel Hannan, has invested an undisclosed six figure sum in Real World Group, the growing internationally respected leadership experts, headquartered in Leeds.
Real World Group is run by CEO, Juliette Alban-Metcalfe, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Business and Enterprise, University of Southern Queensland. They provide evidence-based leadership, team and board development tools around the world. The company spun out of the University of Leeds 15 years ago and works with a wide range of organisations such as the NHS, Costain, Shell, TATA and Plexus Inc at Executive level. They maximise these renowned organisations’ performance, engagement and internal wellbeing on a long-term basis.
Real World Group make a valuable contribution to thought leadership and enable organisations to build an engaging leadership culture from the very top, delivering a clear improvement in performance – measured through the bottom line. Their ground-breaking research, diagnostic tools and consultancy programmes have been written about in trade journals, book chapters and referenced at national conferences. They have appeared in the media on popular programmes such as BBC 4 Woman’s Hour and are often quoted in national and international press.
Among their successes, organisations in a variety of sectors have described how Real World Group have enabled them to save millions, transformed their culture for the better in only 18 months and joined the Top 20 of the Sunday Times’ Best Companies to Work For list. Their cutting-edge expertise in the development of high performance leaders and boards helps to deliver a culture of enhanced performance through engaging an employee’s full potential. Therefore, it is clear to see the Angel investment, which sees Rachel take over as Chairman, is a mutually beneficial strategic alliance of leadership expertise with her executive selection and business growth skills.
Rachel previously co-founded GatenbySanderson, the market leading public sector executive search firm, and successfully exited after the company achieved a turnover of nearly £24m in just 7 years. Since then she has become one of the region’s most active Angel Investors with investments in the education, medical, technology, food, human capital and recruitment sectors.
Rachel Hannan says, “I was impressed with the quality, passion and commitment of the founders. Real World Group is a business which enables me to enhance its value through combining our complementary expertise and experience. Their research is second to none and its evidence based tools have been proven to help businesses and organisations to maximise performance and profit. I’ve been waiting many years to find a business that combines all the areas of work that interest me – not just improving organisational performance, but in the process helping their people realise their potential”.
Through actively harnessing these new synergies Real World Group will be launching an exciting new executive selection tool, the Performance Leader Identifier, which promises to disrupt the market for leadership selection tools across sectors later this year.
Juliette Alban-Metcalfe, Chief Executive at Real World Group, adds, “We have been known for the excellent results we enable our clients to achieve, our customer service and our research-based tools for many years. However, it’s time to scale up and take it to the next level. We are very excited to have Rachel on board and believe her expertise and passion for what we do will be the key to unlocking our next ambitious growth phase.”
