About Kate
I’m one of the first women to complete the Common Commissioning Course at Sandhurst.
Which means I did the same training as the men.
The story
That was 1995. I served for nine years, commanding teams from my first posting (my very first command was of 50 soldiers), leading people through an operational tour of Iraq, working through exercises that left no room for the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. I learned, in conditions that don’t allow much theory, what it takes to hold yourself and others together when everything is at stake.
That understanding has never left me. It shapes everything I do.
After the Army I moved into Ministry of Defence HR, working across commercial and public sectors on large-scale business transformation programmes. I was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office where I first got a taste for the then emerging concept of employee engagement. I managed high-level engagement projects, including data collection and analysis for the UK Civil Service (c400,000 people worldwide).
Throughout, I was sitting with the same question I’d had since Sandhurst: why do some people thrive under pressure while others, just as capable, just as motivated, don’t? And more importantly — what can actually be done about it?
I went back to study. My MSc in Applied Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology, completed with distinction, gave me the scientific framework for something I’d already witnessed in practice: that the gap between capability and performance is rarely about skill or motivation. It’s not about what is wrong with you, as if you are some “gap” to fill. It’s about what is right with you. Moving from what is wrong, to what is strong. The science of what happens when we operate under pressure, and the patterns the body has learned in response to it.
Then something happened that changed the nature of my work entirely.
Our first daughter almost died being born. I suffered significant physical and psychological injuries that night. The recovery was slow, but transformative. I gained a different kind of knowledge. Not the kind you find in research papers, though I’ve read those too. The kind that lives in your body and doesn’t leave.
It is that experience, as much as anything in my career, that makes me the practitioner I am.
What I understand that most coaches don’t
The patterns getting in your way
aren’t always conscious ones.
Most coaching works on the surface. On behaviour, habits, goals. That work has value. But for many of the people I work with, it isn’t enough. Because the patterns getting in their way aren’t habits you can decide to change. They are automatic responses the body learned, often long ago, in conditions that called for them.
You can know exactly what you want to do differently, and still find yourself doing the same thing. Not because you lack willpower or insight, but because the response fires before the thinking starts.
Working at that level requires a different kind of training, a different kind of attention. I’d argue it requires a different kind of lived experience.
I bring all three.
MSc Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology — Distinction
University of East London · EMCC-accredited programme
Published researcher
British Psychological Society · Chartership candidate (Division of Coaching Psychology)
European Mentoring and Coaching Council · Verify →
International Coaching Federation
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Professional standards
Kate upholds the ICF, BPS, and EMCC Codes of Ethics and works under regular clinical supervision. She holds professional indemnity insurance with LaLux (Luxembourg) and a Basic Police Check (available on request). All work is fully confidential.
Zest Coaching is the registered trading name of Kate Brassington Zest Coaching & Consulting, reg. 10129770/0.
Additional training & influences
Kate’s work is trauma-informed throughout, drawing on the fields of traumatology, somatic coaching, and nervous system science. Key influences include Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Babette Rothschild, Deb Dana, and David Treleaven in the trauma and somatic space; Dr Jolanta Burke and Yannick Jacob in the positive psychology and positive existential domains.
Additional accreditations include: Trauma-Informed Coaching Certificate (ICF-accredited); Adult Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM™) Teacher; Internal Family Systems-Inspired Coaching; Certified Meaning and Purpose Practitioner; Mental Health First Aider (MHFA England).
The first step
Kate works with a small number of clients at any one time. The best way to find out whether this is the right fit is a conversation — 30 minutes, no obligation, completely confidential.