Meet Our Support Team

Paul Henshall

CEO Asia Pacific Region

After having built and sold five of his own businesses over the previous 13 years, and gaining his MBA, Paul Henshall joined ActionCOACH in 2003 as a Franchisee.

Initially Paul joined ActionCOACH to simply have a place to utilize the skills and knowledge he had gained throughout his 25 years of business, and hopefully, learn even more.

After 12 years of teaching those lessons to his award-winning clients as a Global Top 100 coach, Paul stepped up to take on the role of CEO of ActionCOACH Australia and New Zealand. Major objective: To build a world class team to support the growing number of franchisees in the Australia/New Zealand Region, and recruit more outstanding coaches to the ANZ Community.

In 2018 Paul accepted the role of CEO ActionCOACH Asia Pacific, overseeing the growth of ActionCOACH to approximately half of the World’s population.

Two aspects have remained at the heart of his passion for ActionCOACH throughout all his roles – the cause and the community. Helping people to achieve success and being a part of the most positive and supporting group of people in the world, the ActionCOACH Community.

Paul’s looking for more outstanding humans to join him.

Kate Panagiotakis

Business Manager - Australia and New Zealand

Kate brings to the team over 15 years experience across a large range of business functions including business operations, finance, event management, administration, legal, compliance , team leadership and Human Resources. She is a jack of all trades and the teams Go to Lady!

Kate joined ActionCOACH in 2012 looking for a “Career Break” but could not help herself in getting more involved and quickly became fascinated by the business. Kate holds a Bachelor with honours degree in Commerce and Spanish and has always been an avid traveler hailing from the UK and spending time living in Madrid, Spain.

Nowadays with her young family travel is limited to beach combing and star gazing adventures closer to home. As a very determined and professional operator, Kate loves to both tackle new challenges head on from both a structured analytical and a creative mindset. In her spare time Kate enjoys both creating a magical childhood and mentoring her children to be prepared for an ever changing world landscape. For relaxation Kate joys nothing more than being near the water or cooking up an outdoor feast for likeminded friends and family.

Rhian Persal

Finance and Administration Assistant

Rhian is the Finance, Marketing and Admin Assistant for both ActionCOACH Australia and New Zealand. Rhian holds a BA in Business Studies and has 10 years’ experience working in sales, marketing and commercial roles in the food industry in the UK.

Today she enjoys living a balanced lifestyle helping out with our finance, marketing and admin whilst also taking care of her 3 children.

Chané Vieira

Marketing Manager - Australia and New Zealand

Born and bred out of a family of entrepreneurs Chané has always had a passion for all things business and marketing. Understanding the challenges of business owners and their families go through, she is a true ambassador of business coaching and is driven to build the ActionCOACH brand to ensure business owners are aware of the benefits of having a business coach.

Chané has established her career in the business coaching space where business coaching will be the next natural progression for her career.

In her spare time, you will find Chané exploring nature, having her go at fitness or balancing it all creating interesting dishes to satisfy the secret foodie in her.

Darren Kerby

Support Manager - Australia and New Zealand

Darren Kerby started working in media in the early 1980s on both sides of the microphone. Eventually he went one hundred percent into sales and marketing across 4 states of Australia and the Norther territory in both radio and television. During this time he has done over 25,000 Diags. His success here has been his questioning, less talk and listening.

In 2013 he started working for Paul Henshall in Business development. Eventually taking the role of franchise support at ActionCOACH. Darren’s disciplined focus with the support role comes from his martial arts background and diploma in Coaching and sport development.

He is a life time ambassador with Habitat for humanity which is about caring for peoples future. He has borrowed this value toward each contact call he has with each coach.

Kate Muldoon

Kate Muldoon - Recruitment Manager Australia and New Zealand

Kate Muldoon, Franchise Recruitment Manager has experienced ActionCOACH right from being a client, through to being an ActionCOACH, and now part of the ActionCOACH recruitment team. She is passionate about the trades industry, and particularly coaching couples in small business to succeed, through the ActionCoach system which she moulded to suit her audience - Ladies with Tradies. Kate works hard to assist people to live a life of no regret, after coming from a background in palliative care where she learned the many regrets of people who felt they didn't do all they wished they had done in life - she supports them to live a life on purpose.

Thomas Reid

Area Manager - New South Wales

As an ActionCOACH and Area Manager of NSW/ACT, I dream of working with business owners to experience the joyful moments like taking the children to school in the mornings and rekindling the love with your significant other on date night one evening every week.

After 16 years of operating my own companies in finance, marketing and entrepreneurship I'm passionate about showing business owners how to have an enterprise that revolves around their own purpose built lifestyle. For me it's spending time with my gorgeous wife and six children, coaching basketball and martial arts. What is it for you?

Marcus Shaw

Area Manager - South Island, New Zealand

Kia-ora! My name is Marcus and I'm a Business Coach and Area Manager based in Christchurch, New Zealand. After completing bachelors degrees in Commerce (Management), and Science (Psychology), at University of Canterbury, I spent 8 years working in marketing and management roles across a wide range of industries. During this time I consulted on several side projects, and discovered a passion for helping small and medium-sized businesses particularly with strategy. Soon after, a friend introduced me to ActionCOACH, and the rest, as they say, is history! When I'm not coaching, you'll find me on the mats training Jiu-jitsu, spending time with my wife and two young daughters or playing my acoustic guitar.

Brendan Denning

Area Manager - Melbourne, Western Australia and Tasmania

Brendan is the Area Manager for Melbourne, WA and Tassie. He helps local businesses in his community thrive via his high-level coaching experience gained through both his extensive business and sporting backgrounds. Brendan also supports franchise candidates through their decision-making process and initial establishment phase.

Darren Silsby

Area Manager - Queensland

Darren Silsby, ActionCOACH Local Area Manager for Sunny Queensland has a track record of turning run of the mill organizations into high-performance teams where individuals feel valued and owners get great results. From a successful past of process systemisation, professional training, business management and team leadership and through working in locations across the world Darren has gained skills in guiding businesses to increase profits, control their time and develop winning teams. His passions are helping people fulfil their potential, building unity in teams and questioning the why of any system; the guidance of these passions and the ActionCOACH system are what enables Darren to build platforms that enable growth built on a strong foundation.

Chris Sharkey

Area Manager - South Australia and Western Australia

Being in business for over 30 years I have been fortunate to be able to gain experience in Management and Business Development. Being a person of integrity with a high level of energy, drive and initiative, I believe that extraordinary outcomes will be achieved by the enthusiastic and focused application of sound business principles.

These years of working with business has allowed me to developed skill in managing people, processes and performance, Becoming confident enjoying training and mentoring people, inspiring individuals and teams to achieve their goals, Skilled in conflict resolution and people management, ensuring exceptional outcomes for both internal and external stakeholders.

Having experience in developing, reviewing and facilitating strategic planning in conjunction with corporate objectives, Understanding the importance of stakeholder engagement and getting the best out of any team.

My leadership is matched by my enthusiasm to work with business owners; collaboratively achieving results that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Ismail Davids

Area Manager - North Island, New Zealand

Ismail Davids was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and grew up in Europe and the Middle East. He is a certified Business Coach with an MBA and specializes in International Business. He has experience and interest in logistics, business growth, finance, operations amongst others.

Ismail started his entrepreneurial venture in his early twenties by launching an import and consulting IT company, thereafter his been a part of many international growth projects and business expansion plans.

The highlight of his early business career is being a founding member of an International Restaurant Franchising group that expanded into Southern Africa and Middle Eastern regions with more than forty-five outlets.

Ismail was on the board for over seventeen years holding positions such as New Business Director, Marketing Director and Regional Director. His latest Global business experience was being a restaurant business consultant in the GCC countries in the Middle East for four years.

In his leisure time, Ismail is an active Flamenco guitarist and singer that has performed on many international stages. He also currently plays at various venues and restaurants around Auckland, New Zealand.

Brian Higazi

Area Manager - Sydney, Australia

Brian joined ActionCOACH in 2016.

Brian has an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm. Not only has he been running successful businesses since he was 26, but he has helped thousands of businesses and business owners to achieve their goals and awesome outcomes.

Brian understands the trials and tribulations of owning your own business and has a passion for sharing his knowledge with others, and so coaching for Brian is both a huge privilege and responsibility. Brian is passionate about helping other business owners achieve their goals, inspiring self-belief and motivating them into action.

Brian has an arsenal of knowledge and application developed over 20 years in financial services. His experience includes working for large corporations such as Price Waterhouse Coopers. Brian has also won numerous awards in the financial services industry for his high level of service and advice.