The creation of Blade in 2006 reflected an intellectual interest in the determinants of human performance, coupled with the enjoyment of helping others achieve their potential. Since then, Blade has worked with individuals, teams and organisations across a range of sectors including banking, FMCG, retail, media and health & fitness.

Ashley Whittaker co-founded Blade in 2006.  Prior to that, he spent 12 years building and leading teams in the financial services arena both in The UK and overseas.  Previously he had been a commissioned Army Officer, a Great Britain rowing international, and a Henley Royal Regatta winner.  He is a graduate of The University of Bristol, The University of London, and INSEAD, and is a certified Practitioner of NLP. In addition to leadership and team performance development, Ashley’s greatest professional interests lie in organisational behaviour, the implementation of change programmes, and the fine detail of elite individual performance.

The Blade Group uses an Associate network to assist in programme delivery as required. Details of these individuals are available on request.

Piers Robinson is a co-founder and now non-Executive Director of Blade, having subsequently taken a full time position as the Global HR Director of Fitness First Group Ltd.  Further to working in a number of management positions in his early career with PepsiCo, Texaco and Diageo, Piers completed an MBA in 2000 and went on to work with a number of early stage technology companies to assist with fund-raising and building management teams before joining Ashley to form Blade in 2006.  A former international oarsman, Piers switched to rowing coaching, winning Gold medals at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, where many of his theories about improving the performance of individuals and teams were developed. Piers is a graduate of the University of Bristol and Imperial College Business School, where he is now a Visiting Fellow, lecturing MBA students on topics such as ‘Generating Elite Business Performance’.