Breathworks was originally formed back in 2004. It was one of the first Community Interest Companies - a new sort of 'social enterprise' company - in this country. There are no dividends and all the assets belong to the Breathworks Foundation, a charitable organisation.

Our work has focused on providing mindfulness to the many individuals struggling with pain, illness, and stress, for whom mindfulness has provided an enormous respite from suffering.

Over the last year or so we have been strategically broadening the scope of our work to include mindfulness for pain, stress and illness in the workplace, as well as helping people improve their wellbeing in this context. To this end we decided to expand our Board and recruit Non-Executive Directors who would be able to offer advice and guidance based on their own areas of expertise.

To this end, we decided to expand our Board and recruit Non-Executive Directors who would be able to offer advice and guidance based on their own areas of expertise.

Non-executive Business Director

We are delighted to announce we decided on two people to fill the post of ‘Business Development’ Non-executive Director. It is a pleasure to introduce them below.

 

Gillian Roche-Saunders

Gillian is a partner with a London-based law firm ‘Bates Wells Braithwaite (BWB)’ – a firm known for its work in the charity, not-for-profit and profit-with-purpose sector.  She has experience of successfully establishing a consultancy within BWB that advises financial firms and her experience of successfully 'scaling' new business will be of great value to Breathworks. She also has wide-ranging business and strategic experience and knows how to challenge and support in an appropriate way – again we look forward to benefiting from her expertise. 

Gillian has a personal interest in mindfulness and this is what drew her to apply for this role with Breathworks. She says: "While I am still at an early stage in my own mindfulness practice, I see the impact that being more present and compassionate can have in the workplace and am excited to support Breathworks in its mission".

 

Olly Church

Olly Church is a founding Director of the Eleos Partnership, a consultancy organisation offering mental fitness training with mindfulness as its core component. He came to mindfulness to help him deal with PTSD as a consequence of his time serving in the military having been injured in Afghanistan. 

Olly has extensive experience across a range of roles in the military, he has a degree in Peace Studies and has worked widely in the Civil Service and in a variety of charitable roles.  He shares the values of Breathworks and is keen to offer his experience and expertise to help us extend our reach to more and more people within society.

Non-executive Finance Director

We are also delighted to introduce Robert Jones, our new Non-executive Finance Director.

Robert brings extensive experience of scaling business, having been Managing Director of Windhorse Trading for 23 years. At its peak Windhorse Trading was turning over £12 million per annum and was listed as one of the Independent's UK top 100 fastest growing companies several years running.

Robert also has extensive experience of managing a charitable enterprise with a trading company, which is a similar structure to the Breathworks Group. We know that he will be able to offer invaluable advice as we grow the impact of Breathworks.

Learn more about Breathworks Board members here.