Our Purpose

Strengthen the mental and emotional health for everyone 

We’re on a mission to make our programmes available to the people who really need them – young people, people on low incomes, or in marginalised groups and areas. We strive to ensure that financial barriers do not prevent anyone from accessing the support and resources necessary to improve their emotional health and wellbeing.

All of our team have lived experience which has led us to utilise professional help for our emotional and mental health.  We all recognise that we have held professional jobs which allow us the luxury of being able to seek such help.  More importantly, we know there are many, many people for whom professional help is inaccessible or prohibitively expensive.

Meet the team

  • Emma Gannon BA (Hons), MSN Dip, CISL

    MANAGING DIRECTOR

    Emma considers EmPower to be her Ikigai - bringing together her career in designing top-class customer experiences, her lived experience of emotional and mental health challenges and recoveries and her long-held desire to align her career with her purpose and values. Her happy place is nature – spending time with others and exercising in the great outdoors. And cooking. Emma radiates positive energy and is poised, passionate, and empowered to help the planet’s well-being. That’s quite an Ikigai. Look it up.

  • Jeff Cockfield MSc, FDAP, MBACP

    THERAPIST + ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER

    Jeff holds a master’s degree in counselling and psychology and has been a practising therapist since 2003. His experience is wide, long and varied. He has worked with street addicts, people with career angst, mild, moderate and severe emotional health issues, business people, celebrities and even royalty. Jeff’s personal history before his current career is one of mental health struggles and alcohol addiction. He’s been sober and in recovery since 1995 and has been helping people ever since, professionally and on a voluntary basis. Jeff plays an active role in our seminars (he’s a very entertaining presenter) and programmes and sits on our advisory board to ensure our effectiveness and your safety.

  • Dr Rachel Megahy Bsc (Hons), DClinPsych, Cpsychol

    PSYCHOLOGIST + ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER

    Rachel is a clinical psychologist with over 20 years experience working both within the National Health Service and privately. Rachel specialises in helping adults who experienced trauma in childhood, especially those we were repeatedly exposed to abuse and/or neglect. She also specialises in disordered eating which is often a coping behaviour related to complex trauma. Rachel is passionate about empowering people to build their own toolkit for recovery. She sits on our advisory board to ensure our effectiveness and your safety.

  • Alan Clayton BSc, Dip Mngt

    FOUNDER

    Alan has spent 30 years accelerating people with purpose around the world. His specialism is seminar design, creation and delivery. He also brings lived experience to the retreat. He is in recovery from the negative effects of serious ACEs and abandonment and was the first trial participant in the EmPower programme. Alan has combined the experience of the clinical team with his own experience to shape a programme which is precisely designed to work for you.

  • Dr Iain MacRitchie

    FOUNDER

    A serial entrepreneur and social entrepreneur. After a career in private-equity Iain has spent the last eight years as a full-time volunteer leader of MCR Pathways – the charity he founded through his foundation. The award winning charity started in Glasgow and is now national and specialises in ensuring that no young person is trapped in trauma alone.

  • Malene Fregil M.A

    PROGRAMME DESIGNER

    Malene has had a career in seminar development following an education in ethnography and cultural development at the University of Copenhagen. There is academic theory and research behind everything that we do and when it comes to teaching and seminar design. This is provided by Malene. Her expertise is in designing engaging and effective learning experiences that lead to real-world results.

  • Connor Seaton BSc

    CLIENT EXPERIENCE MANAGER

    A recent graduate in Business Management, Connor brings a new energy to the team with a great understanding of what it means to be a successful business in the 2020s and a flair for developing long-lasting relationships with clients. Connor’s role is to help you onboard and ensure you have the best possible experience.

Why we exist

One of our founders created the programme for himself.  The root of this is in multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences and he has lived with much anxiety and some addictions.  Although sober for years, the COVID lockdowns, in his own words ‘broke him.’ 

The isolation and stress brought back all the old anxieties and obsessions.  He reached out for help and researched emotional and mental health for weeks.  He worked with a senior therapist and a clinical psychologist and designed a 12-week programme and tested it on himself.  The results were dramatic. 

He himself says ‘I will never achieve perfect peace, but nor would I want to.  I am still me, but a better me, one I am more comfortable with.  I feel I am in a confident place now and maintaining that is much simpler than making the change.’

Since 2023, we have been turning that programme into one that anyone can use and complete.  We have developed and tested the format, the content and the technology (detail really matters!) and we are overseen by an advisory board made up of specialists qualified in therapy and clinical psychology.  The results from clients so far match or exceed the outcomes that our founder experienced, which makes us all very happy indeed.

We are moving to our ‘beta phase.’  We are not yet ready to go to the open market with EmPower, but we know it works and that it works well. 

So we are looking for further clients who are happy to be early adopters – to design and work our fully professional programme while at the same time providing us with constant feedback so we can really work the details. 

What we are offering at this stage is heavy discounts and payment options for you if you wish to join us in the beta phase - which is beyond a pilot but still maturing.

Interested? Well, we’d love you to join our growing community and get involved. You’ll be helping yourself and others.

So far, clients are reporting an average 36% improvement in their feelings of wellbeing (a big increase) and are expressing a lot of joy in the process. In fact, several people say they feel it has been life-changing

“It might require a leap of faith, an investment of time, and an open mind, but it will be the best decision you make to help your future self.”

– EB, Cornwall –