Wendy Sullivan is one of the UK’s top trainers of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling. She has worked extensively with the originators of the field – David Grove, James Lawley and Penny Tompkins – over the past eight years.

Wendy is also a qualified trainer of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and uses elements of this alongside Clean Language in her work with individual clients, and business teams.

Aged 50, she lives in Isleworth, west London, with her husband Robert.

She and her husband both originate from South Africa. They moved to the UK 15 years ago and now regard London as home.

Wendy explained: “Growing up in South Africa it was all very colonial. We were reading children’s books full of fluffy bunnies and bumble bees, but you don’t get bunnies or bumble bees in South Africa!

“ So when we came to the UK on holiday it seemed familiar already. And when the opportunity came up to move here when Robert was offered a good job, we didn’t have to stop to think.”

Wendy’s degree was in speech and hearing therapy, and as soon as she qualified she was thrown in at the deep end, working half the week in a whites-only hospital, half in a non-white hospital in apartheid South Africa.

In the non-white hospital 11 languages were spoken – none of which she knew – and she was expected to conduct her speech therapy sessions in front of a roomful of queuing patients.

In order to pick up the basics of some of the more commonly-spoken languages, she learnt to listen even more acutely than beforea great background for a Clean Language specialist!

Once in the UK she continued to work as a speech therapist, in the NHS and in schools. At the same time, she was developing her interest in NLP (including trainer training at NLP U at the University of California at Santa Cruz) and, from 1997, Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling.

In turn this led to the foundation of her company, Discovery Works Ltd, which uses the training name of Clean Change Company for Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling activities.

“From a Speech and Language Therapy perspective, what I could see was that I could make a bigger difference in someone’s life if I had these skills,” she said.

“For example I had one client, a girl who had difficulty in expressing herself in school. I did some ‘mainstream’ speech therapy with her to build her expressive language skills specifically – but really for her it was the more NLP-based work that we did that made the difference and allowed her to manage her state so she was arriving at school in a reasonable mood for learning generally, as well as for having access to her ability to express herself as well as possible.

“Learning NLP meant that I could raise the bar and make a real difference to people.”

When not working, Wendy enjoys theatre visits and scuba diving. But her biggest enthusiasm is the development of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling.

“I’m in the hub of all sorts of new stuff, growing, developing and interacting with people at that level. In many ways my life is unfolding to match my dream!”

Click the links to find out more about Wendy’s services, including how you can book a one-to-one session with her.