I am deeply passionate about effective communication—whether I’m performing and bringing stories to life myself or coaching and directing others to achieve their full potential.

With a global career spanning acting, directing, facilitation, and coaching, I have worked extensively on leadership excellence programs designed to drive high performance. I create psychologically safe spaces where leaders and teams can experiment, reflect, and grow. Over the past two decades, alongside my acting and sales roles, I have collaborated with senior leaders across diverse industries, helping them refine their leadership skills through experiential learning, tailored sessions, and personalised coaching.

What makes my style distinctive is the way I draw on my actor-facilitator background—using storytelling, improvisation, and role-play to create dynamic, engaging, and transformative learning experiences.

I have a wealth of experience delivering courses for both public and private sector clients on a wide range of topics, including personal impact and presence, difficult conversations, coaching, influencing and inspiring, sales and negotiation, objection handling, conflict management, presentation skills, storytelling, forum theatre, equality, diversity & inclusion, mediation, de-escalation, interview techniques, overcoming nerves, unconscious bias, and emotional intelligence.

I’m also proficient in using frameworks such as DISC, Insights, and StrengthsFinder 2.0 to help individuals and teams gain greater self-awareness and work more effectively together.

Alongside coaching and facilitation, I design and write scripts and training content for both live and recorded actor-led learning programmes, ensuring each experience is immersive, engaging, and leaves a lasting impact.

I am proficient in frameworks such as DISC, Insights, and StrengthsFinder 2.0. As well as various coaching, feedback and leadership models.

I approach leadership and team development much like I do acting with curiosity, presence, and adaptability. I create psychologically safe spaces where people feel supported to take risks, explore new behaviours, and reflect openly, using storytelling and experiential techniques to make learning engaging and memorable.

What I value most is seeing leaders and teams have those breakthrough moments of connection, confidence, or clarity. My style is distinctive because I blend my professional acting and facilitation background to bring energy, empathy, and creativity into the room. Through role-play, improvisation, and scenario work, I help people challenge assumptions, build self-awareness, and step into their potential.

Location:

Based in North London but also have a base in Newport South Wales.

“Rachel is an excellent facilitator, roleplay actor and coach. Her empathetic and interactive style brings out the best in the groups she works with. Rachel quickly understands the context of any situation and then provides a safe environment for people to explore. She gives specific actionable feedback. Rachel is also great organiser and can bring events together efficiently and effectively. I love working with her and highly recommend her.”

David Solomon Director – Sun and Moon

“I had the pleasure of working with Rachel Howells as she introduced the powerful benefits of forum theatre for learning across our organization. Thanks to her expertise and creative approach, courses featuring forum theatre consistently receive outstanding feedback from participants—more importantly, they deliver learning experiences that truly stick.

Rachel’s skill set goes far beyond innovative learning techniques. Her mastery in effective conversation coaching and mentoring is exceptional. She creates spaces where real growth and self-reflection can happen, and her influence has been instrumental in helping us shape a culture that values both learning and psychological safety.

If your company is serious about embedding a genuine coaching culture, boosting measurable and transformational human-centered capability, and fostering safe, engaging places to learn and work, I wholeheartedly recommend Rachel. Her impact is not only immediate, but lasting.”

Kerry Brewer Head of Learning and Development – Change Grow Live