Branch guides
Our guides combine professional and lived experience, with their extensive practice coaching women through this transition back to their careers:
Anouk is a learning and development project lead and an accredited coach. She has spent over 15 years working as a programme manager in the tech, start-up and non-profit sectors, most recently at Google, leading community for Google Maps.
Anouk trained in Advanced Professional Coaching and Mentoring with Wise Goose and is a member of the Association for Coaching. Her coaching work is mainly with women, helping them navigate career or life challenges, transitions and vision.
She has extensive experience coaching women returning from maternity leave and knows first hand that this can be a confusing time, faced with shifts in identity, priorities and career direction. Anouk has two young daughters (5 and 10) and lives in East London with her family.
Florence is an intuitive leadership coach and talent advisor. She has spent the last decade building and scaling high performing teams and launching new markets for venture-backed tech companies including Hired Inc and Hootsuite.
After having her children, she trained as an executive coach at the Academy of Executive Coaching. Florence’s coaching work brings together her extensive experience in building teams and a deep understanding of human nature.
Florence has worked extensively with women returning to work after maternity leave and has recently developed The Shefa Method to help the individuals she works with identify their unique talents.
Branch Founding Team
Harriet Wright & John Ridpath have known and worked together since meeting in 2014 at digital transformation and education company Decoded.
Harriet Wright – Co-founder and CEO
Harriet is a second time founder having spent the last decade building businesses. In 2017, Harriet was accepted to Entrepreneur First where she spent a year developing Panopy, a tech solution to identity unconscious bias in performance reviews. Harriet moved to the Financial Times setting up and growing their consulting business FT Strategies from the ground up.
In 2021 Harriet left to have her first baby and she returned to work more ambitious than ever, taking on a new role at global tech startup investor Techstars. It was here she experienced first hand how difficult returning to work can be. At this time a small group of women were invaluable to Harriet and the idea for Branch was born.
John Ridpath – Co-founder and COO
As an experienced leader, educator, and writer, John brings a unique blend of skills to his role as Co-Founder and COO. His journey in transformative education began at Decoded in 2011, where, as Head of Product, he developed technology education programmes for global companies. This role honed his expertise in crafting learning experiences that support change and growth.
In 2021 John founded London Undergrowth, a learning organisation that explores ideas such as regenerative economics, biomimicry and systems thinking. In this role, he has explored various approaches to educational practice, such as peer-to-peer learning and nature-based facilitation.
In his current role, John works alongside Branch’s coaches to revolutionise how parents return to the workforce. He has a particular focus on Branch’s technology, product and operations.