Meet our Team:
Elizabeth Ling – Principal Mediator
Elizabeth is a compassionate problem-solver who believes in being “tough on the problem, gentle on the person.” Her emotional intelligence shines through in her ability to interpret the unspoken, deftly navigating intense emotions and distress.
With a career spanning 28 years in Social Housing, Elizabeth has honed her expertise in balancing tenant support with enforcement, including managing complex County Court possession claims and mediating to prevent homelessness for Local Authority landlords.
A Registered Mediator with the Civil Mediation Council, trained and accredited by the London School of Mediation, Elizabeth plays a key role in the LSM training, coaching, and assessment faculty. She is certified in Civil, Commercial, Workplace, and Transformational Mediation and contributes her expertise to Westwood Mediation and Limelight Creative Arts Mediation.
Her work with The Stone Foundation—a housing charity and landlord supporting men with severe mental health challenges—is particularly close to her heart. Here, she facilitates critical conversations on shared living, family dynamics, and health services, helping to prevent hospitalisation, re-incarceration, or homelessness. Elizabeth finds deep fulfilment in this work, recognising that mental health challenges can touch anyone, irrespective of their background.
In addition to her mediation roles, Elizabeth serves as an Adult Crime and Family Magistrate, where she handles complex family disputes and is a member of the East of England Warrant Panel. These demanding experiences further refine her conflict resolution skills, making her a dynamic and empathetic professional.
Elizabeth’s cheerful down-to-earth personality, extensive expertise, and unwavering commitment to making a positive difference have earned her wide recognition as an award-winning colleague.
Rachael Heenan
“Rachael is a first-class mediator. She gets on top of the issues and what matters to the parties and invests the time beforehand to give the process the best chance of success. She has a wonderfully positive and approachable manner, while also being firm and authoritative. She is committed to resolution and finding a way through where possible. I cannot recommend her highly enough. ”
Clients say she is a ‘phenomenal, superstar lawyer” “capable, bright and pragmatic” and has a “refreshing down-to-
As a CEDR accredited mediator, Rachael has worked with clients to resolve disputes relating to contractual issues, partnership disputes, workforce relationships and high profile and sensitive issues.
Chamber and Legal 500 Legal Directory rankings/Client feedback:
Ranked in Band 1 as a Leading Lawyer and Client testimonials.
“an inspirational role model, value driven, unique sense of care and compassion”
“She has the ability to make issues real for us. She is a consummate professional.”
Julian Evans
I have been helping to resolve disputes and dysfunction in businesses for a very long time now. I love doing this, restoring good order, peace, renewed energy and thriving where this has withered. As one client put it, I have been like adding Castrol GTX to his business!
Ages ago, I was formally accredited as a mediator three times – for civil and commercial disputes, workplace disputes, and family ones too – and have also been Certified by the International Mediation Institute. In addition, I am a Chartered Manager, a Certified Principal Business Psychologist, plus a well-qualified and experienced executive coach, all of which adds much ‘power’ to my method of engagement with ‘issues’ people want to be resolved.
In addition to all this, I have decades of top-level leadership to draw from which ranges from being on a corporate management team with responsibility for staff-to-management relations (for 600 staff) along with oversight for strategic change programmes (these always have many ‘issues’ to resolve), through to supporting, coaching and mentoring a multiplicity of CEOs and senior leaders in SMEs and corporate businesses across the UK in more than 25 different sectors.
I don’t think anything would surprise me now. Basically, I’m a safe and useful pair of hands to help you with your ‘issues’, to help restore good order, peace, renewed energy and thriving for your people and your business.
Penny Morrison
Penny has been accredited as a mediator by the London School of Mediation for Civil, Commercial and Workplace purposes.
Penny is a natural mediator and uses her experience of complex issues, paired with deep emotional intelligence, to really tune in to the needs of the client, listening carefully to the key factors in a dispute and assisting participants to find a way forward.
Penny also practices as an employment law specialist at Osborne & Wise, previously having worked at international law firm Salans and at Excello Law. She has significant experience advising on all aspects of employment law, both contentious and non-contentious. Her areas of expertise include discrimination, unfair dismissal, whistleblowing, redundancies, employment aspects of mergers and acquisitions (due diligence, TUPE, contract negotiations), drafting employment contracts, handbooks and settlement agreements and HR support (advice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, bullying and harassment, maternity and other parental rights).
Penny advises both corporate and individual clients. She understands the importance of practical, commercial and human solutions to what can often be emotive issues. Penny has contributed to Butterworths’ Employment Law Guide, one of the principal texts for employment law practitioners and is also a member of the Employment Lawyers Association.
Outside of work, Penny loves spending time with her three (growing up too fast) children, travelling and cooking for friends and family.
Elizabeth Holden
Elizabeth has spent many years helping clients negotiate deals, or boards come to well-grounded commercial decisions. She’s also facilitated many tricky conversations around the board table. Having spent 20 years as a corporate lawyer in the City, in 2012 Elizabeth moved into non-executive roles in listed and private companies and not-for-profits. Alongside this portfolio, she has coached and mentored many individuals at pivotal moments in their careers. Her mediation work allows her to bring together many of these experiences, to the benefit of individuals and organisations alike.
Kate Marchant
Kate is an experienced HR professional with a long career working in senior HR roles in the private sector.
Kate is also an accredited mediator and works with businesses to successfully resolve workplace conflict. Kate’s pragmatic approach to workplace mediation has seen successful resolution between work colleagues who feel entrenched in their conflict and unable to see a way out. She has a great ability to put people at ease, giving them confidence in the mediation process and the part they play in achieving resolution to their issues.
Also as an HR Consultant, she supports a wide variety of businesses with their people issues. Kate’s areas of expertise is across all HR related practices and she has a specialism acting as an out-sourced HR specialist running investigations into grievance, disciplinary and other internal processes. In addition to her employee relations expertise, Kate also provides fractional HR support to businesses who have no, or minimal, in house HR support and has helped many businesses set up their HR foundations.”
Kate is an Associate member of the CIPD and CMC. In addition to her employee relations expertise, Kate also provides fractional HR support to businesses who have no, or minimal, in house HR support.”
