Meet the Team

Your hosts for the New Horizons Retreat are the Westcott Personal Development Team.

Judy Taylor

Judy is an experienced developer and facilitator who has helped thousands of people discover, elevate and realise their potential. She has a well-earned reputation for designing programmes that catalyse and transform and for delivering programmes which are stretching, supportive and fun.

Her personal development sessions will help you clarify what you really want and identify what’s getting in the way of you achieving it. Her approaches will help you see how your assumptions, beliefs, behaviour patterns and blind spots are holding you back and tripping you up and they’ll enable you to develop new ways of perceiving and being.

Judy’s delivery style combines an analytical approach with creativity and compassion. She creates a climate that fosters trust and this will enable you to develop deep, lasting relationships with your fellow participants. This will help you take risks, embrace difference and share your dilemmas, struggles and vulnerabilities. Her collaborative, flexible style is powered by clear purpose, high impact methodologies and an action orientation.

Judy has designed and delivered thousands of national and international leadership development programmes to senior leaders in the NHS, local authorities and charities. She was a Senior Consultant at The King’s Fund for twenty years, where she ran the women’s leadership development programme and all the organisations development offers for doctors.

Judy had a Masters in Public Policy and is currently undertaking a Doctorate in Existential Psychotherapy. She is a trained coach and has a Certificate in Psychotherapy and Counselling from Regents College, London and a Human Interaction Laboratory Certificate from the NTL Institute in Florida. She uses numerous psychometric assessment tools such as the Myers Briggs Type Inventory and Firo.

For more information on the role our team plays in creating the New Horizons retreat, click here.

Amanda Wilsher

Amanda has a background in theatre as an actor, writer and director. She is Joint Artistic Director with theatre company Plested Brown and Wilsher with whom she has written and directed numerous shows and pantomimes. She helps clients discover their creativity and natural voice, so they can engage, stimulate and transform.

She applies her theatre skills and techniques to her personal development work, offering creative exercises and approaches such as mask work, improvisation, storytelling, simulations, real play and forum theatre.

These ways of working will help you find new perspectives and develop new behaviours and skills. She works experientially and sensitively to help you engage with change, increase your personal impact and lead crucial conversations. Amanda uses wit and humour and she has a knack of stimulating useful revelations. Her sessions are non-threatening, fun and stretching.

Amanda also works with leaders across the sectors, delivering personal impact, crucial conversation and storytelling workshops as well as team development, action learning sets and coaching. She works with local, national and international corporate sector organisations, including Sainsburys, Shell, Pernod Ricard, Pfizer, Plan, Nomura Bank and Bayer and she has delivered workshops for Ashridge Consulting, Korn Ferry and The Whitehall and Industry Group.

Amanda has been an Associate at The Kings Fund for 23 years and is a faculty member of the NHS Leadership Academy. Her public sector clients include The Stroke Association, The Alzheimer’s Society, Hospice UK and numerous hospitals and GP practices. She delivers the ‘Identity, Impact and Voice’ module on the Advance Higher Education Aurora programme for women.

Ella Matthews

Ella is a therapist, guide, coach and educator with a deep commitment to supporting people through life’s changes. With a multidisciplinary approach that integrates mind-body awareness, trauma-informed practices, and creative exploration, Ella creates a safe, immersive space within which you will be able to release your limitations, reconnect with yourself, and rediscover your innate resilience.

Drawing on extensive experience and training in Cognitive Hypnotherapy, TRE® (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises), Buteyko breathing, Ashtanga yoga, yoga nidra, and somatic education, Ella blends evidence-based techniques with a warm, compassionate, and meditative style.

Her work is rooted in understanding the body as a map of experiences, enabling you to process emotions, move on from suffering and release anxiety and stress so you can navigate transformation gently, powerfully and sustainably.

As a Pain Neuroscience Educator and Health Coach, Ella brings a unique lens to her work, guiding you to delve into the interconnections between mind, body, and environment. She combines this with creative personal exploration, helping you access personal insight, self-expression and renewal through visualisation, imagination, movement, and reflective exercises.

Ella’s philosophy is underpinned by the guiding principle that positive change is always possible, given the right conditions and it’s her aim to facilitate those conditions. She believes that change is most sustainable when approached holistically via physical, mental, emotional, and energetic layers of experience.

By offering tailored tools, immersive practices, and supportive facilitation, she will empower you to step into a felt sense of confidence, safety, nervous system flexibility, clarity, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Over the years, Ella has worked with people navigating burnout, chronic pain, stress, anxiety, fatigue, and major life transitions. Her approach is gentle, empathetic, and grounded in real-world results, helping you create lasting change rather than temporary relief.