The Eternal Optimists

Ollie Phillips
Ex-England Rugby Captain and once voted the Best 7’s Player in the World, Ollie is a Director at PwC and Founder of Optimist Performance. Since retiring from professional rugby, Ollie has been involved in a number of life-changing challenges and has notched up 4 Guinness World Records to date. Ollie brings over 20 years of experience in sports and business to help leaders overcome change and transform their teams to achieve new levels of success.

Charlotte Wathan
Charlotte has a twenty-year career history as an academic and strategist, leading cultural change most recently as Head of the Women’s game at the Welsh Rugby Union, where she instigated the inaugural professional contracts for senior women’s rugby. Charlotte has a wealth of experience working across public, private and third-sector organisations. Charlotte is a self-confessed insight geek who supports companies in measuring the impact of strategic and cultural change.

Russell Earnshaw
Having graduated from Cambridge with a Maths and Economics degree, Rusty played rugby for several teams, including Bath (winning the European Cup in 1998) and England 7’s, before moving into coaching and working with England U18’s, U20’s and 7’s, coaching and mentoring some of the brightest young players and coaches in the country. He now works across business and sport, helping the likes of Google, Abbott, NZ Rugby and GB Hockey responding to their needs, including creativity, coaching skills, leadership and high-performing teams.

Ryan Jones, MBE
Ryan is a three-time Grand Slam-winning former Wales Rugby Captain & British and Irish Lion. Ryan is the Ex-Director of Performance at the Welsh Rugby Union and a previous Board Member of Disability Sport Wales. Ryan was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours in 2021 for his services to rugby and charity, raising thousands of pounds for the NHS during the first lockdown period in 2020, with events such as a solo garden marathon and a 100-mile kitchen treadmill endeavour.
Learn more about our Optimistic Talks!
Optimistic Insights
Can leaders help with anxiety at work? – By Optimist Performance
Our jobs are or can be, for many of us, a source of stress and anxiety, and since in May we have Mental Health Awareness Week, we wanted to talk about some of the most common causes of anxiety at work and what leaders can do to help with it. What can cause anxiety at...
Styles of communication in the workplace – By Optimist Performance
Have you ever been in a meeting and thought “Why is this taking so long, this could have been sorted in an email”? Or maybe you thought “Why is he going over so many details? I don’t need to know all that.” We are all different, which means we all have different...
What do our Eternal Optimists say? – By Optimist Performance
At Optimist Performance, we are always looking for ways in which we can improve ourselves. What lessons we have learned and how we can use them to become the best version of ourselves and help others do the same. So, to celebrate International Women’s Day this year,...