Zena is an international executive coach, with a rare cocktail of entrepreneurial, headhunting, organisational psychology and coaching experience. She started and ran her own recruitment business and became fascinated with why some of her candidates were more motivated, confident and successful than others. To figure that out, she sold her business, completed a Masters in Career Management and Counseling, and undertook further post-graduate coaching training. She now helps ambitious people to achieve career goals they didn't know they had, or were capable of until they worked with her.

Brought up in Ireland, Zena coaches people from many different cultures and backgrounds, from actors to actuaries and mum returners to MBAs, coaching on the Executive MBA programme at Oxford University's Saïd Business School.

Her recruitment business recruited other recruiters - so not only was she a recruiter - she was a recruiter's recruiter. This gave her unique inside knowledge of how recruitment consultants evaluate CVs and why some candidates make it through filtering processes and others don't. She comes from the sharpest end of the recruitment business and demystifies the black arts of this industry. Her dissertation provided unique insights into how recruiters, HR professional and employers evaluate the personal statements on CVs and she draws on this in her first book, Mind Flip.

Zena is a regular media contributor on career and workplace issues (BBC London: Careers Agony Aunt with Jeni Barnett; LBC; BBC 5 Live; BBC Berkshire; Sky News; Radio 4 Today Programme; BBC One Breakfast; The Guardian; The Financial Times; High50; Cosmopolitan; and Vice). She is passionate about raising the confidence and ambition of people at work and is a popular, inspirational speaker at conferences and events.

She is a non-executive director and trustee of Quo Vadis Trust, a social housing charity that supports people with mental ill health. Zena lives in London and is writing books.