Clare Dryhurst Biography

Clare’s spent 40+ years helping build leaders’ and individuals’ capacity, collaboration and resilience.

She is a professional coach and facilitator whose passion is to help every individual to understand themselves and others, and to acknowledge and harness our differences in delivering a common cause.  She has worked with Windsor Leadership since 1998, including programmes in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and pioneering female and faith programmes, and she is an alumna of the Human Resources leaders programme.

Her most recent career was with the British Civil Service, where latterly Clare was Organisational Wellbeing Lead for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).  She helped Defra to identify and deliver the organisational conditions needed for its staff to maintain their wellbeing and resilience while supporting the EU Exit and the UK’s COVID response.

She previously ran the early and diverse talent programmes for the Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy Department (BEIS).  She was also a senior Human Resources Business Partner in BEIS, the Home Office and the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  Clare started her working life at Leeds University and then the Post Office.

Clare is a Yorkshire woman born in Leeds who moved as an economic migrant to London and has DNA from England, Ireland (possibly Scotland) and Wales.  She was brought up partly French (her parents taught in schools and university). Members of her close family also originate from China and Bangladesh, and encompass Catholic, Protestant,  Methodist, Muslim, Jewish and atheist practices. Clare is the eldest of four and is happiest when helping people be the best they can be.  She is a former President of St Anne’s College Oxford alumnae association, runs its London branch, chairs its independent Remuneration Committee and is active in helping to increase access for students from diverse backgrounds to study at Oxford University and to support them when they join.