Faculty
Paul Jackson Associates provides a select faculty of facilitators, trainers, coaches and improvisers. The team brings together Applied Improvisation, Solutions Focus, facilitation design, performance craft, coaching and organisational development. We work with leaders, teams and facilitators who need practical ways to respond to change, collaborate and make progress.
A distinctive thread
Paul’s work has always connected clear thinking, live response and performance craft. This short clip, featuring Ruth Jones, writer and star of Gavin and Stacey, gives a glimpse of that wider story.
Paul Z Jackson
Paul is a pioneer in what helps people think, respond and create together. He worked first as a newspaper journalist before moving into broadcasting and comedy. As a script editor and senior producer at BBC Radio, he commissioned and developed writers and performers, introducing many to their first professional contracts.
Alongside his BBC work, Paul founded and directed a succession of improvisation comedy groups. Many performers he worked with, including Rob Brydon, Ruth Jones and Julia Davis, became widely known. He’s taught improvisation at The Actors Centre and several business schools.
Looking back on those early years, Rob Brydon wrote in his autobiography: “Paul taught me techniques that I still use today, the most basic of which can be summarised as ‘Yes… And’.”
Rather than confining improvisation to the theatre, he began exploring what its principles could offer leaders, teams, trainers and facilitators: better attention, quicker response, more productive collaboration and greater capacity to work when the outcome cannot be scripted in advance.
Paul co-founded the Applied Improvisation Network, serving as its President for ten years and helping to establish an international field for applying improvisational practice beyond performance.
A second major strand is Solutions Focus. Paul has trained more than 1,000 coaches in solution-focused practice and is co-author of The Solutions Focus and co-founder of SolWorld. His other books include Easy, The Inspirational Trainer, 58½ Ways to Improvise in Training and Let’s Improv!
Today he leads Paul Jackson Associates, bringing together work on leadership, facilitation, creativity, learning, storytelling and organisational change.
Janine Waldman
Janine Waldman brings three decades of experience in leadership development, executive coaching and organisational change. She held senior HR and learning and development roles in UK and New Zealand multinationals before establishing her own consultancy in 2002.
She works as an executive coach, coach supervisor, facilitator and organisational development consultant across private, public and educational organisations. Her work ranges from supporting individual leaders to team development and organisational change, as well as developing internal coaches and facilitators.
Solutions Focus is integral to Janine’s work. She has trained thousands of leaders, coaches and practitioners worldwide in this pragmatic, forward-looking approach, helping them have more constructive conversations and make meaningful progress.
Janine co-authored Positively Speaking: The Art of Constructive Conversations with a Solutions Focus with Paul. They also co-wrote The Resilience Pocketbook and The Executive Guide to Engagement, Resilience and Performance.
As a senior associate with Paul Jackson Associates, she brings a complementary perspective to our improvisational strand, paying close attention to what people want, what is already helping and what small next steps can create useful change.
Anthony Errington
Anthony Errington combines a career in software engineering with a growing body of work around creativity, play and improvisation.
He came to improv through Improv in 6 Acts and went on to become a regular performer with Oxford’s Awkward Actors. He now also performs as part of the duo Small Talk, Big Feelings and has joined the Improv in 6 Acts teaching faculty.
Anthony is particularly interested in what happens when adults recover some of the creativity and playfulness that can get squeezed out of working life. He explores this through his Creative Rehab podcast, his writing at The Improvised Life, and a range of creative projects alongside his work in technology.
His own experience of improvisation has given him a practical interest in reducing overthinking, becoming more present, making stronger offers and responding to what is actually happening rather than trying to plan everything in advance.
With Paul Jackson Associates, Anthony combines analytical thinking, creative practice and performance experience, helping people experiment, respond and collaborate with more confidence when there is no ready-made script.
Andy Tulley
Andy combines more than 20 years in business and technology leadership with extensive experience as an improviser, teacher and facilitator.
He performs regularly in both long-form and short-form improvisation, with experience ranging from local shows to theatres and conference events. He is also part of the teaching faculty for Improv in 6 Acts, helping participants develop collaboration, creativity, listening and confidence through practical improvisation.
Andy has contributed to young leadership programmes, including work in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations and Worcester College, using improvisation to explore leadership, communication and working with others.
His experience with major private and public sector organisations gives him a practical understanding of how people work together when priorities shift, information is incomplete and plans need to change. He brings that organisational experience together with improvisational practice to help leaders and teams communicate clearly, collaborate well and respond usefully to uncertainty.
Belina Raffy
Belina Raffy works at the intersection of Applied Improvisation, creativity, sustainability and humour, helping people think differently about complex issues and work more effectively with others.
Based in Berlin, she has worked internationally as a facilitator, trainer and improviser, using improvisational approaches to develop collaboration, adaptability and fresh thinking. Paul and Belina have worked together on programmes at London Business School and with Newcastle Science City, bringing Applied Improvisation into organisational and leadership settings.
Author of Using Improv to Save the World, Belina also created Sustainable Stand Up, which uses comedy and improvisation to help people working on environmental and social issues find engaging ways to explore and communicate subjects that can otherwise become heavy or polarised. Paul has co-facilitated the course with her.
Her contribution to Paul Jackson Associates brings together playful experimentation and serious purpose: helping groups loosen familiar patterns, see more possibilities and create progress when the subject is complex and the answers are not obvious.
Eren Slate
Eren Slate has several years’ experience working in education in both university and secondary school settings.
With an academic background in chemistry, he’s also been performing, off and on, since his teens and came to Applied Improvisation via performance improv with the Awkward Actors.
Working in mainstream education showed Eren that doubts over potentially giving an incorrect answer or suggestion often stopped pupils from putting forward their ideas at all. This has made him a firm believer in the LIFEPASS principles to help us all feel more at home with uncertainty and work together to plot a solid course forwards.
Outside of improv Eren dances Lindy Hop and spends more time thinking about perfumery and cake than he should admit to!
Joe Robinson
Joe combines a background in mathematics and space engineering with several years of improvisation and performance.
He studied Mathematics at University College London and works as a Flight Dynamics Engineer at Astroscale, on the complex business of predicting and managing spacecraft movement in orbit.
Alongside this highly analytical work, Joe is a regular performer with Oxford’s Awkward Actors. Improv sees him working in the moment with incomplete information, responding to other people and building something together without knowing exactly where it will lead.
Based in the Didcot area, Joe contributes analytical thinking and live collaborative practice. He has a particular interest in the skills that matter when plans cannot specify everything in advance: attention, communication, adaptability and making a useful next move with the information available.
Work with the right people for your purpose
Tell us what you are planning and what would count as useful progress.