Circl

Our mission is to build a world where anyone, regardless of their background, can learn to lead. We believe the way to get there is through real world coaching experience alongside the next generation of diverse leaders.

The Circl story

Circl co-founder Charlie started his career working with young adults from underrepresented groups. He quickly learnt that there were many aspects blocking their access to professional careers, including a lack of communication, leadership and people skills. This was mainly owing to the fact that time in education is entirely focused on exams – teachers recognise the importance of people skills, but have little time to teach them.

Meanwhile Adrian Blair, Circl’s other co-founder, was leading teams at Just Eat, Spotify and Google. During 20 years of leadership at high growth tech businesses he constantly found that professionals need leadership development and meaning in their work. He also found that traditional leadership training was theory-based and offered practice only in artificial situations (e.g. trying out skills on colleagues).

When they met in late 2018, the idea for Circl was born.