Beyond the ordinary

Rick has over 30 years of experience in leadership, operations, and coaching within diverse and challenging environments. His career spans roles in the British Army, the Fire and Rescue Service, HM Government, Corporate leadership and consulting in High Hazard Industry, as well as supporting the mental health and wellbeing for Anti-Poaching Operations in Africa.

Rick has delivered training and consultancy in Behavioural Safety, Human Factors and Risk Management for a number of clients including, BAE Systems, Kimberley Clark, AIRBUS UK, The Arabian Drilling Company in Saudi Arabia, Cavendish Nuclear, Ol Pejeta, Borana, Samburu Conservation organisations in Kenya, Game rangers International in Zambia, as well as supporting ZSL (Zoological Society of London) in tactical training for anti poaching teams in Cameroon. He is a Mission Performance Ltd Associate, and an Associate Consultant/Trainer for Ardent Safety Ltd.

After years of silently struggling with PTSD, Rick’s journey led him back to his childhood home of Botswana, where, on a solo trip of self rediscovery in the central Kalahari he fused his personal lived experiences with Indigenous wisdom, modern psychology, and Applied Metapsychology, which led him to develop his system.

Today Rick leads Human Performance, Resilience, Post Traumatic Growth training and Psychological Risk management close support. Rick is the lead consultant for Obsidian Psych-Risk. He is a Trauma Incident Reduction Facilitator (TIR), Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) Debriefer and licensed Mindspan Mindset Consultant and coach. He is also a certified Performance Coach and Action Learning Facilitator. He is also an accomplished public speaker, and has been a contributing author for two amazon bestselling books on leadership and trauma.

Rick is a trained wilderness medic/first responder, a Fellow of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (FITOL), a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) a Member of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (MIIRSM), and holds a variety of NEBOSH and Post Graduate qualifications in his field, he is also a member of the Frontier Risks Group Security Risk Management Consultants (SRMC) Alumni.

About our Senior Associate Practitioner - Andy Pike

Andy served in the Army Reserve as a Rifleman in the late 1970's leaving to join the Fire and Rescue Service where he served for 30 years. Most of his service was in London Fire Brigade. He retired in 2012 as Station Commander of Knightsbridge and Kensington Fire Stations. He has also been in command of Chelsea, North Kensington and Wembley Fire Stations.

In September 2001 he travelled to New York to assist in the recovery operation at the World Trade Centre, as he had many friends in the New York Fire Department, some of whom were missing. He was on site at the World Trade Centre digging with his bare hands with hundreds of other New York Firefighters, but specifically with 2 very good friends, both Captains, one who was looking for his missing son, who was a serving Fire-Fighter.

By his own admission he suffered a rollercoaster of emotions and bad life choices including suicidal thoughts for 5 years before he was successfully treated using Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR).

He joined the RAF Regiment reserves in 2010. He was trained as a Combat Medic and was Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) trained as part of the medical helicopter casualty retrieval teams. Furthermore, in 2012 Andy was trained in the same TIR techniques that in his own words 'saved his life'.

Then in 2014 aged 53 he was mobilised for deployment to Afghanistan. After completing his pre deployment training in July 2014 he was not deployed due to the cessation of Operations in August the same year.

Andy has been successfully using both his experience and these techniques helping Riflemen (and others) with the veteran’s charity ‘Just Rifles’ since 2017 and is a deployable Senior Associate Practitioner with Obsidian Psych-Risk. Andy is a firm advocate for Obsidian Psych-Risks approach to Psychological Risk management and brings valuable lived experience and skills to the team.