Gillian Stamp
Director, Bioss the Foundation
Gillian Stamp MBE MA PhD DPhil is founder of Bioss International. She now works as a sounding board for chairmen, chief executives, senior civil servants and senior staff in the UK, USA, Europe, India, Singapore and South Africa. She also works with small organisations, social entrepreneurs and voluntary organizations in various countries.
For several decades, Gillian Stamp has worked as a sounding-board for leaders as they look to the future.
Building capacity with people and institutions, she has offered support, reflection and counsel to chairmen, chief executives and senior staff in the UK, USA, Belgium, Hungary, India, Singapore, Australia and South Africa, in both the private and public sectors, with military and religious organisations, social enterprise and not-for-profit groups.
In each consultation she blends strategic assessment and human insight, helping clients make sense of uncertainties, clarify opportunities, and initiate positive change.
Gillian is the author of Career Path Appreciation (CPA), an innovative, in-depth, reciprocal process for identifying the potential of people to make decisions in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
One manager, at the end of the guided conversation that initiates a Career Path Appreciation, told Gillian, “Listening to my story has been really interesting.” Now conducted by dozens of practitioners, CPAs are helping thousands of people, across a diversity of organisational cultures and around the world, examine and evolve the story of their working lives.
Gillian has developed further practical models for understanding and addressing individual and organisational issues, including:
- The Matrix of Working Relationships, developed with John Isaac: a way of looking at a mosaic of levels of work and connectedness in working relationships.
- The Tripod of Work: a model of the conditions in which people at work can be confident and competent.
- The Four Journeys: a way of thinking about approaching the balance between work, private life and personal development.
- Knowledge Appreciation: a human approach to knowledge management.
As a director of the Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Studies (Bioss), founded in the 1960s by Elliott Jaques at Brunel University, Gillian has overseen the organisation’s growth into an independent global network.
Gillian led Bioss for twenty-three years as it expanded across the world until, in 2005, she stepped back from direct leadership and now guides Bioss the Foundation.
Her work with commercial concerns has covered a wide spectrum including AIA, NTUCE Singapore, Discovery Health, Barclays, ICI, BA, BP, BAA, Rio Tinto, Morgan Stanley, Lazard, Schroders, Cisco, Westpac, Huntsman, Unilever, Borsodchem Hungary, the Prudential, and Anglo American.
She was an advisor to the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), and is now an advisor to its successor, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC). She has worked with the Civil Service Commission in the UK in support of the development of high-potential civil servants and Permanent Secretaries. She was a member of the board of the National School of Government and a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute, a virtual academy of leading academics from the UK, Europe and US, created to advise and advance public service, build capacity in the National School and support the strategic priorities of government.
Gillian also works with small and medium organisations, social entrepreneurs and voluntary organizations on four continents. She has a special interest in the role of microfinance in capacity-building.
Gillian’s advisory roles include the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, the Scottish Executive, the National Defence University in Washington DC, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Office for National Statistics, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the Employers’ Forum for Disability, the Community Action Network, and ‘Grow Coffee, Cut Poverty,’ a fair-trade initiative in Africa.
She was a member for seven years of the Council of St George’s House, Windsor Castle, and currently serves as a Fellow of the Windsor Leadership Trust.
Gillian was married to Colin for more than forty years; they have two sons and five grandchildren.