Meet the Team

A woman with medium-length hair sitting in a car, looking out the window.

Expertise

Executive Coach and Mentor (PG Cert.) | Strategic Leadership (PG. Dip.) | Leadership & Management (L5C) | Teaching & Learning (L3A) | UEFA C Football Coaching |

Strategic Leadership | Organisational Design | Governance & Assurance | Change Leadership | Executive Decision-Making | Risk & Accountability | Culture & Behaviour | Workforce Strategy & Design | Stakeholder Influence | Performance & Delivery | System Leadership | Board Governance |Interim Leadership | Complex Problem Solving.

What people say

Those who have worked with Cathryn consistently describe the same things.

A thought-provoking style that gets to the truth without losing the room. The ability to see the strategic picture and make it land in practice. A genuine commitment to getting the best out of the people around her.

And a relaxed directness that makes the hardest conversations feel possible.

Voted Most Insightful, Senior Leader Programme — Cranfield University

Cathryn Henry

Founder

Most organisations already have what they need to be extraordinary. They just haven't found it yet.

Cathryn founded One Degree Development because she kept seeing the same thing - talented people, capable leaders, and real potential, held back by comfortable conversations that nobody was willing to challenge.

She has spent over thirty years working at multiple levels and types of organisations - from frontline delivery to the boardroom — and the truth she kept finding was the same: the gap between where organisations are and where they could be is almost always smaller than anyone thinks. And almost always harder to close than anyone admits.

She built One Degree Development to close that gap.

Read Cathryn’s Blogs here.

Experience

Thirty years across skills education, public sector, private sector, and healthcare. From frontline delivery to boardroom.

Leadership of organisations under pressure - transforming underperforming departments, redesigning governance, and delivering results others said weren't possible.

Elected roles. Board chair. Directorships and Non-Executive Directorships.

£1.2 million in savings; £2m funding pressures resolved. Profitability improved by 34%. Targets achieved against national decline.

Values

Radical honesty over comfortable mediocre performance.

The person at the centre of the work always matters most.

Small shifts, applied precisely, create extraordinary results.

Truth told carefully but directly.