Jan Thornbury is an expert practitioner and consultant in strategic- and cultural change. Her work has delivered award-winning results and outstanding levels of employee engagement. She is a recognised thought leader on organisational culture, professional services firms and the legal sector, and has published widely in the academic and business press. As well as being a trusted adviser to C-suite, she is a popular conference speaker, facilitator and educator, valued for her experience, specialist knowledge and warm, engaging style.
Her approaches to culture, strategy and change are academically rigorous, while at the same time offering practical, actionable solutions. She is highly effective at engaging people at all levels in the organisation, and passionate about building her clients’ change capability. She has taught, mentored and advised dozens of change leaders, C-suite, managing and senior partners. She counts top FTSE 100 organisations and over a dozen professional services firms among her clients.
Jan began her consulting career with KPMG, where she was a founder of the firm’s human-centred change consultancy. She later became Director of the Office of the International Chairman, where she led the development of the firm’s globalisation strategy and worldwide culture programme. On leaving KPMG she founded Thornbury Consulting Associates, working with leaders of global organisations and professional services firms to deliver breakthrough strategies and sustainable culture change. She has also held Director roles at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, where she was responsible for strategy development and execution; EY Law, where she founded and led a legal strategy and transformation consultancy aimed at General Counsel, and for Elevate Legal Services, where she ran the Law Firm Consulting practice in the UK.
Jan has extensive international experience: she lived in Germany for over seven years, while mandates with global organisations have taken her to every continent. She is a fluent German speaker and has deep insight into cross-cultural differences and the challenges of running a global business.
She has a 1st class honours BSc in Mathematics from Queen’s University Belfast; an MSc in Atomic Physics that she completed as a DAAD scholar at Ruhr-Universität-Bochum, and an MBA from Henley Business School. Her MBA dissertation explored the link between organisational culture and resilience to change, and was a key factor in her winning the prize for graduating top of her year.
Alongside her work with the Møller Institute, Jan consults on:
- Values & Organisational Behaviour, with focus on developing and embedding authentic, shared values, and changing behaviour to align with these
- Vision, Strategy & Transformation: defining organisational purpose, goals, a blueprint for the future organisation and transformation roadmap
- Leadership: providing a sounding board, advice and support to C-suite, including design and facilitation of leadership meetings and retreats, conferences, team offsites
- Organisation Development, providing advice and support on performance review and management; employee value proposition; 360 degree feedback; skills development; organisation-wide consultations; team dynamics; effective ways of working and change capability.