Mike Vincent
Assistant Facilitator
Mike Vincent spent the first 34 years of his adult life working for Esso Petroleum Co. Ltd. In 1964 he was seconded to Esso Mediterranean in Geneva where his eldest daughter was born and he designed and built Lubricating Oil Blending facilities in Lebanon and several African countries. He also carried out operational audits around Africa. He then became Operations Manager in Lebanon, where his son was born. On returning to England he held a variety of managerial posts within the country, and was advisor to several European countries. He attended a number of Business Management courses, and helped negotiate with the trade unions a radical new approach to work within the industry. During the late 1970’s he decided that he was not finding the satisfaction in the work that he wanted and negotiated with the company that he would retire when he was fifty. Through his distance running and yoga practice and teaching he became interested in a more soulful approach to life. He was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in 1994 and a second prostatic tumour in 1998. He retrained as a counsellor and since graduating in 1998 he has had a private practice and combined his previous skills with his new ones to help change the culture of a Waldorf school management structure where he was Chair of the trustees for four years. He is currently a trustee of three charitees and chairs the User Participation Group for the Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire Cancer Network.