Marie-Annick Gournet

Marie-Annick joined The Centre as an associate in January 2021. Her experience as a leader within the Higher Education sector, as a Non-Executive Director and as a leading catalyst in setting up the Bristol Global Majority Teachers’ Network inform her coaching approach. She currently coaches senior leaders from the corporate and public sectors.

As a qualified coach/mentor Marie-Annick has successfully coached individuals from across Higher Education, schools, public services and large investment organisations (such as Hargreaves Landsdown) and International organisations (such as DNV).

She is a result driven leader with a demonstrable track record in the domain of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Marie-Annick has over 20 years’ experience of working in senior leadership roles both in higher education and the voluntary sector. She has experience of teaching in the Secondary, Further and Higher Education sectors.  In addition to coaching, she works part-time at the University of Bristol as Director of Part-time programmes, were she leads a department delivering a wide range of programmes from taster courses to MA programmes in the School of Humanities.

In September 2017, Marie-Annick set up MAG Consulting which offers a variety of consultancy, training and coaching services in pedagogy, diversity and intercultural communication.

Throughout her professional career she worked with a range of organisations in diverse Non-Executive Director roles. She is currently a Non-Executive Director at Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust.  

“Dr Gournet is an experienced Higher Education professional with a track record in leadership, education strategy and policy development, and the coaching and mentoring of others. She has led Academic Development in a post-92 university for a substantial number of years, leading and enthusing academic and professional service staff to engage in their own personal development leading to fellowships, external funding and acclaimed awards (e.g. National Teaching Fellowship; Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy). Her oversight of other initiatives such as Staff Excellence Awards helped foster a culture where teaching is valued and staff are encouraged to excel, and many of these strands were evidenced in the TEF Gold Award of June 2018 of this institution, with the Panel recognising the “thorough and systematic embedding of an institutional culture for the recognition and reward of teaching excellence”.

Dr Viv Rolfe (NTF, PFHEA) -

She is a Senior Manager with over 25 years of experience in a large organisation and the ability to analyse, evaluate and review areas of underperformance, and provide effective policies and solution focused strategies.
She is a community engagement strategist with highly refined interpersonal skills and the ability to build effective relationships to mobilise the expertise and support needed to realise agreed goals.

Awards and Qualifications

Marie-Annick received training on the ILM 7 Executive Coaching and Mentoring

She has an M Level qualification in Executive Coaching and Mentoring from UWE, Bristol

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the University of Bristol