About
Educators before consultants
Based in Reykjavík. Operating globally.
The practice
Who you would be working with
Lauren Charnow
Coach · Co-founder
Lauren is an artist and community builder who has designed programmes in the United States and Iceland. For the past seven years she has run Kría Aerial Arts, an aerial silks school in Reykjavík that brings people together across every kind of background and has them build skills, confidence and trust in each other. She has also made school projects on teamwork and bullying, using theatre, dance and circus to teach belonging and empathy to young children. Her other projects have used performance for intercultural learning, and language learning and sharing to strengthen communities.
Her training is deliberately interdisciplinary: acting at Marymount Manhattan College, then a self-designed degree at Skidmore College in dance and drama therapy, combining sociology, sports science, psychology, dance and theatre. She has since trained in circus therapy at the Circus Arts Institute in Atlanta and on the CTF Social Circus Transformation Program. The conviction underneath all of it: creativity, care and relationship belong at the centre of how people work together.
Adam Switala
Coach · Co-founder
Adam is an adjunct lecturer and doctoral candidate at the School of Education, University of Iceland, researching music, identity and belonging. He has worked for over twenty years in a wide variety of educational settings, from early years and schools to universities and lifelong education, and in community projects across Europe and the United States. He also works as a facilitator and leadership coach, designing workshops and strategic processes for organisations in the public and cultural sectors. His postgraduate training includes systems thinking and creative interdisciplinary problem-solving at the University of Bergen.
His other way into this work is through the arts, with pieces shown at the Venice Biennale (Kids Carnival), MUCEM in Marseille, HAU Berlin and the National Gallery of Iceland. That is where his view of group process comes from: collaborative, participatory, rooted in listening. He also serves on international boards and committees, currently with the International Society for Music Education and previously the Polish Music Council.
Alex Grimshaw
Senior adviser
Alex has been a consultant in human resources since 1987, specialising in leadership and executive development. He has designed and run executive programmes on team functioning, vision and strategy, leading in turbulent times and sales leadership, and he coaches senior individuals one to one on their own organisational effectiveness, across a dozen industries from banking to pharmaceuticals. He speaks regularly at international conferences on leadership trends and on the difference a senior leader makes to what an organisation actually achieves.
He is the founder and Managing Partner of SyNet, which he built to operate as a true virtual network of expertise for clients and consultants alike, and he runs its network development and research. Working across cultures is his other specialism. He is an associate of the International Futures Forum, and has advised this practice since January 2026.
How we came to this
We are educators before we are consultants, and it shows.
Between us we have spent most of our working lives in educational settings, often involving creative work. That is a different training from business school, and it leaves you with different instincts: less faith in frameworks, more attention to what is actually happening between the people in front of you. This is where our strengths lie: we put people first, and we have learned to trust creativity and improvisation through years of practice.