A well known North East fundraiser and former pharmaceutical executive has launched a new business with his wife in a bid to tackle ‘culture-washing’.
Ivan and Nadine Hollingsworth have created Centric Consultants, based in Newcastle, as part of a mission to help business leaders to build strong, sustainable, high-performing teams based on trust and psychological safety – not just pool tables and pizza Fridays. The company, which has already worked with companies across the UK including ITV, Norgine Pharmaceuticals and Mediaworks, takes a full-team approach to training, focusing on the importance of connection and the power of trust when it comes to increasing performance, reducing burnout and staff retention.
Mr Hollingsworth spent over 16 years in the pharmaceutical industry, working and interacting with different team dynamics, in the private and public sector. He says his experience with pharma firms, alongside his training as an elite-level athlete and chair of CHUF (The Children’s Heart Unit Fund), has helped him to identify what makes a truly high-performing team.
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He is joined in the business by his wife Nadine, who is using her background in HR and internal recruitment to project manage major culture and wellbeing initiatives for Centric’s clients.
He said: “In the current economic climate, it is more important than ever for businesses to adopt sustainable models for business resilience and growth. To achieve amazing results, businesses have to take a real look at what their team culture really is – and walk the talk, not just talk the talk on websites and social media channels. True culture is more than the perks that you offer, it’s how psychologically safe your people feel within the organisation, that’s what delivers results.
“When I talk to teams, it isn’t just theories from a text book – the knowledge comes from our lived-experience as a family and from the training I’ve undergone for fundraising challenges over the years. I talk a lot about what resilience means in practice; resilience isn’t a personality trait or an attribute, it is an output, a reaction to the situation happening in that moment. No-one knows whether they are truly resilient or not until you are dealing with any given scenario.
The idea of resilience has been weaponised and is often used to exert power over others which isn’t beneficial to individuals or to businesses. We can’t stop life going side-ways sometimes but we can support our people and give them tools to be able to cope when it does. Being resilient doesn’t mean not experiencing emotional pain or suffering, it means finding ways to work through it.”
Mr Hollingsworth was one of the first recipients of the Prime Minister’s Point’s of Light Award for contributions to the community, has been awarded the Pride of Britain award for fundraising and led the campaign to keep the Newcastle Freeman Hospital’s Children’ Heart Unit open after more than a decade of uncertainty. Over his career he has raised over £500,000 for charity and most recently made national and international headlines when movie star Ryan Reynolds – and other Hollywood stars from the Marvel Universe – publicly supported his son Seb, after the teenager underwent open heart surgery in 2022.
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