THE TEAM

ABOUT US

CAIA was founded in 2018 by two Leadership Consultants frustrated by the lack of high-quality Leadership & Psychological support for startup founders and truly entrepreneurial corporate leaders. After having worked for four of the world’s leading Leadership Consultancies, assessing and developing leaders of FTSE100 companies globally, we realised that start-ups, scale-ups and VCs world would highly benefit from our solutions.
We founded CAIA to provide innovative, deep & impactful leadership & talent solutions for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. Fast forward five years and we work with leaders running businesses of all sizes & stages: from Early-Stage Start-ups, to Scale-ups to Multinational Corporations. 
We are a diverse team of certified executive coaches with multiple language skills and diverse cultural backgrounds. Inclusivity is important to us, which why our team consists of psychologists and consultants from Germany, Australia, Romania, North America, the UK, Barbados, Malaysia, China, India, the Maldives, Singapore and Italy.

  • Lara Menke is the CEO and Co-Founder of CAIA. She is a Leadership Consultant, Business Psychologist and Executive Coach with more than six years of experience working with leaders from all backgrounds. She is passionate about unlocking the full potential of people by working at a deep psychological level.

    Prior to CAIA, Lara worked for three of the world’s top leadership consultancies, where she assessed and developed senior leaders in FTSE100 companies, globally. Her areas of expertise include Leadership Profiling, Leadership Development, Top Team Effectiveness and Talent Strategy Implementation. Lara has experience across a variety of industries and has consulted through all levels of the organisation, from individual contributor through to the C-Suite.

    Lara is particularly passionate about empowering women in their leadership. She is the founding Ambassador of Future Females London, an organisation that exists to support the success of females entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs globally.

    Lara has an MSc in Organisational Psychology from UCL and a BSc in Psychology from Maastricht University in The Netherlands. She speaks fluent German, Italian and French.

  • Kirra is an experienced business psychologist, coach and leadership consultant who is constantly seeking new ways to bring innovative solutions to the challenges faced by leaders and organisations. She has a keen focus on understanding the psychology behind human behaviour in order to unlock meaningful change. Kirra’s coaching style blends empathetic guidance with thought-provoking challenges. Her focus lies in empowering clients to navigate their emotions and confront ingrained limitations.

    Since joining CAIA in 2019, Kirra has made a significant contribution by co-founding the COA Values Assessment, a psychometric used to help leaders and their organisations define and redefine what matters most to them. Kirra’s approach to leadership development combines cutting-edge research with practical, real-world experience. In her work, Kirra leverages her deep understanding of the interplay between psychology, leadership, and organisational performance to provide insightful and actionable recommendations that help her clients navigate complex challenges and achieve their potential.

    She has a proven track record of success in working with a diverse range of organisations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her recent clients include multinational corporations such as Rio Tinto, BHP, Woolworths Group, Diageo, and The Body Shop, as well as government agencies and not-for-profits.

    Kirra holds a Master of Business Psychology, and a Bachelor of Psychological Science from the University of Queensland in Australia. She has also completed an Intensive Program in Forensic Psychology at Maastricht University in The Netherlands.

  • Simona Haivas is a tenacious, purpose-led talent and leadership development expert with a get stuck in mentality and a track record of delivering impactful solutions in a variety of contexts. She has been coaching leaders and high potential individuals for more than seven years, specialising in helping leaders who are experiencing transitions and growth in fast-paced roles and environments.

    Simona has worked as a leadership consultant and executive coach for 7+ years. She brings experience in: executing end-to-end Talent Strategy (talent acquisition and onboarding, talent development, performance management, succession planning), consulting with business leaders to align their people and culture agenda to business goals, leadership development & coaching: defining and implementing leadership capability frameworks and potential frameworks; defining and executing leadership development programmes.

    She is a certified leadership assessor and coach (ICF accredited) and is certified in the Hogan Leadership Suite. In addition, Simona is certified in a wide variety of psychological schools: Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Systemic coaching, Gestalt practitioner, Conversational Wisdom. Simona has a PhD in Organisational Psychology with focus on employee motivation and speaks fluent English, Romanian and German.

  • Constanze Pauline Harding is a Business Psychologist, passionate about helping organisations and leaders transform, adapt and thrive, from the inside out. She delivers assessments, coaching, training and culture change consulting services to organisations and their people across a range of industries. Prior to becoming a leadership consultant, Constanze was an established management consultant for 8 years, where she supported businesses on re-structures and large-scale transformation journeys. The learnings she gained from this period are very much still integrated into her work, so when helping clients today, she leverages both her solid business mindset and combines this with a deep understanding of human personality and the science of what makes leaders effective. Constanze has a MSc in Organisational Psychology from UCL, a MSc in European Business from ESCP Europe and a BSc in Philosophy & Economics from the University of Bayreuth. Born by a German mother and a Chilean father, she has worked, lived and studied in the UK, France, Germany, Chile and South Africa which helped her gain a broad, global perspective. She is a transformational coach, certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and also accredited in several well-known leadership diagnostics, including HOGAN. To expand her insight into the human mind, she gained relevant qualifications in Psychotherapy and NLP.

  • Tiffany is a certified Executive Coach (CPCC), Business Psychologist, and Leadership Advisor to senior leaders and teams of FTSE100, Fortune 500 and high-growth startups and scale-ups. Throughout her consulting career, Tiffany has designed and facilitated impactful group-based development experiences as well as executive coaching for leaders ranging from C-Suite, ExCo to middle management and everything in between.

    Tiffany has held senior consulting roles at Korn Ferry, a global, top tier management consulting firm, as well as a boutique London-based consultancy focused on top-team development. She’s worked across industries including Technology, Consumer Retail, Financial Services including Banking, Private Equity and Asset Management, Professional Services and Healthcare.

    As a Leadership Coach, Tiffany is best known for skillfully working at depth with a pragmatic edge. She takes a whole person-centered approach to her coaching, offering a unique blend of analytical thought grounded in acute emotional intelligence. She brings a flexible and adaptable style while firmly holding onto the client’s aspirations, rather than a fixed, rigid approach to goal attainment.

    She enables clients to move from a state of complexity or stuckness to clarity and informed action by helping them access and optimise the full extent of their resources.

    Tiffany’s approach blends incisive curiousity, perspective-taking and constructive challenge to help clients quickly get to the core of their challenges. She is skilled in blending human insight from her strong knowledge of psychology with a pragmatic, grounded approach to personal and professional development. She is particularly adept at spotting and navigating the complex human challenges inherent in business and leadership problems.

    Prior to leadership development, Tiffany held roles in higher education and healthcare, researching and applying the principles of Optimal Human Performance to clinical and research settings. Tiffany holds a BSc Honours in Psychology and Physiology from the University of Toronto, Canada, and a MSc Psychology from the University of East London, United Kingdom. She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), trained with the Co-Active Training Institute and accredited by the International Coach Federation.

  • Theresa is a Business Psychologist and Design Expert at CAIA. As part of her role, she supports the team with the design and implementation of recruitment, on-boarding and talent managament solutions tailored to startups’ company values. Her responsibilities include:

    • Designing and publishing marketing material in order to expand CAIA’s clientele.
    • Researching key insights to support work on Inclusion, Culture, Leadership and Startup Growth.
    • Analysing personality and values psychometric data to produce insightful reports.
    • Managing the administration and development of COA: our own Personality Assessment for start-ups designed to help founders accelerate as leaders.
    • Supporting the design and project management of client workshops.

    Theresa holds a BSc in Clinical Psychology from Radboud University in The Netherlands and is currently completing her MSc in Psychology at Berlin University.

ADVISORY BOARD

  • Gurnek Bains is the CEO and Founder of Global Future Partnership. In 1990 he co-founded YSC, a global leadership consultancy, that he led for 25 years as CEO and Chairman to a position where it now has 20 international offices and a client base comprising over half of the FTSE100.

    Gurnek is a trusted adviser to some of the most prominent business leaders in the world, the author of two books – Cultural DNA and Meaning Inc – as well as chairman of the internationally-acclaimed contemporary dance company, Akram Khan.

    He lives in London with his Australian-born wife, Kylie, and his two Arsenal-supporting children.

  • Gorkan Ahmetoglu is an Assistant Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL) and the co-founder of Meta Profiling Ltd. He has previously held the positions of Director of Management and Entrepreneurship, Director of Digital Entrepreneurship, and Director of Consumer Behaviour at Goldsmiths, University of London.

    Dr Ahmetoglu is the author of Personality 101 and the editor of the Wiley Handbook of Entrepreneurship. He has published numerous articles and reviews in leading academic journals including Harvard Business Review and Management Today.

    He is a leading expert in psychological profiling and a business adviser / speaker in the areas of talent, entrepreneurship, innovation, and consumer decision-making. He is an associate to the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab at Harvard University.

  • Stephan is a practicing organizational scientist and the Director of Product Development and Innovation at RHR International. His research specializes in creativity, entrepreneurship, and social identification in the workplace. In his role, he leverages the latest in behavioral and data science as well as technology to create products that drive workplace performance.

    He has worked with world-leading consultancies, FTSE 500 firms, and international banks to introduce rigor to their talent management and assessment strategies. He has experience coaching C-suite stakeholders through the power of evidence-based practice for effective people decisions.

ALUMNI

Meet our Global Community of outstanding Business Psychologists who have helped to grow CAIA throughout the years as part of our Business Psychology Internship Programme

Let’s connect!