Why Eminere Exists: Leadership, Belonging, and the Work That Actually Matters
Every business starts with a moment of clarity.
For me, that moment arrived not in a boardroom but in a corridor. I was a senior leader at an organisation I had poured myself into. Successful by every external measure. And quietly, persistently aware that something fundamental was missing. Not just for me, but for the many talented people around me who were performing brilliantly inside systems that were not designed to fully include them.
That recognition did not leave me. Eventually, it became Eminere.
Patrice Gordon is a TED speaker, author, and inclusive leadership coach based in the UK, working with organisations and senior leaders across sectors and continents. Her two TED talks on reverse mentoring have introduced the concept to a global audience. Her work is grounded in years of practitioner experience, not in theory, but in the messy, human, high-stakes reality of organisations trying to become something better than they currently are.
Why does inclusive leadership still need fixing, and what does Eminere do about it?
Eminere exists to close the gap between the kind of leadership organisations say they want and the kind they actually practise.
That gap is measurable. Deloitte's 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report found that only 10% of business leaders believe their organisations are equipped to build leadership capability at the pace the current environment demands. McKinsey's 2024 Diversity Matters Even More research found that companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity in executive teams are 39% more likely to achieve above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile.
The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 adds a sharper edge: only 49% of employees globally trust their employer, down from 61% in 2020. That collapse in trust does not happen in the abstract. It happens in daily interactions between leaders and the people they lead. It is rebuilt, or not, in exactly the same way.
The problem is not awareness. Most leaders know what good looks like. The problem is implementation, the daily practice of leading in ways that unlock the full capability of every person in the room. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 confirms what is at stake: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and human leadership are among the fastest-rising skills employers need as AI reshapes work. The organisations that thrive will be the ones that invest in those skills deliberately, not accidentally.
That is where Eminere works.
What is reverse mentoring, and how did Eminere pioneer it?
Reverse mentoring is the practice of pairing senior leaders with junior colleagues in a structured relationship designed for mutual learning. The senior leader gains fresh perspective, proximity to emerging thinking, and honest insight into the lived experience of their organisation. The junior colleague gains access, visibility, and development they would rarely receive otherwise.
Patrice pioneered this practice at Virgin Atlantic before it had a formal name or framework, one of the first executives to design and implement what is now widely recognised as a reverse mentoring programme at scale. Her two TED talks on this work have been viewed by audiences across the globe, and her book on reverse mentoring, published in 2023, provides the practical framework behind Eminere's programme design.
What she observed at Virgin Atlantic was transformational: leaders who genuinely listened became more effective. Organisations that embedded the practice became more inclusive and more innovative. The organisations Eminere has worked with consistently report improvements in senior leader self-awareness, cross-generational understanding, and the retention of junior talent who feel genuinely seen and invested in. For a fuller look at the evidence and what a well-designed programme looks like in practice, see our dedicated reverse mentoring page.
Organisations today are navigating up to five generations in the workplace simultaneously, with different values, communication styles, and expectations of leadership in the same room at the same time. Generational diversity at this scale is either a source of friction or a competitive advantage, depending entirely on whether organisations have the structures to bridge it. A well-designed reverse mentoring programme is one of the most effective of those structures.
What does executive coaching at Eminere actually involve?
Much of Eminere's most impactful work is the work no one sees.
Executive coaching is the space where leaders are able to be honest. Where the polished performance of seniority can be set aside and replaced with something far more useful: genuine self-examination. Where the question is not how do I appear, but who am I becoming as a leader, and is that aligned with the impact I actually want to create?
The framework at the centre of Eminere's coaching work is GROWN, an evolution of the widely known GROW model with one critical addition: Narrative. Not just the goals a leader is working toward, but the story they tell themselves and others about who they are and what they are capable of. When that narrative becomes clear, everything else follows more naturally: accountability, self-awareness, the willingness to be seen as a work in progress rather than a finished product.
For more on how self-awareness underpins everything else in leadership development, see our piece on developing self-awareness as a leader. For a look at how psychological safety is built or broken in the rooms leaders occupy every day, see our piece on psychological safety in leadership.
Eminere works with senior leaders and aspiring executives across sectors, from FTSE-listed organisations to ambitious entrepreneurs building something entirely their own. The common thread is always the same: a desire to lead with more intention, more self-awareness, and more lasting impact.
How does Eminere support women's development in leadership?
The pipeline for women in senior leadership continues to leak. Not because women lack the capability or the ambition, but because the systems they operate within were not designed with them in mind.
Patrice Gordon works as a leadership coach for women across the UK and internationally, bringing her own experience of navigating, succeeding in, and ultimately redesigning spaces that were not built for her. The development work Eminere does with women is not inspirational content dressed up as strategy. It is the practical tools, the honest community, and the specific thinking that allows women to navigate, challenge, and ultimately change the systems around them.
This work spans executive coaching for individual leaders, the inclusive leadership development programmes Eminere delivers inside organisations, and structured group programmes like Power to Pivot, which supports women making deliberate career transitions. For more on what this looks like in practice, see our piece on building confidence as a woman in leadership and our piece on why knowing your worth is not arrogance.
Growth is not something that happens to you. It is something you commit to, design for, and pursue with intention. Everything at Eminere is built around that belief.
For you to sit with: What is the gap in your organisation between the leadership you have and the leadership you need? Where does it show up most clearly? When did you last receive feedback that genuinely changed how you lead? What made that feedback land?
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Eminere is an inclusive leadership consultancy founded by Patrice Gordon - a TED speaker, published author, and experienced executive who pioneered reverse mentoring at Virgin Atlantic before it had a formal framework. Eminere works with organisations and senior leaders across sectors to close the gap between the leadership they aspire to and the leadership they actually practise. Its three core service areas are reverse mentoring programmes, executive coaching, and inclusive leadership development - each designed to create measurable, lasting change in how leaders lead and how organisations include.
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Patrice Gordon is best known as a pioneer of reverse mentoring, a practice she developed and implemented at Virgin Atlantic before it was formally named or widely adopted. Her two TED talks on reverse mentoring have introduced the concept to global audiences, and her book on the subject is one of the definitive practitioner resources available. She works internationally as an inclusive leadership coach, an executive coach, and a keynote speaker on inclusive leadership, reverse mentoring, and intergenerational workplace dynamics. She has delivered programmes and keynotes for organisations across aviation, financial services, retail, hospitality, and professional services.
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Reverse mentoring is a structured professional relationship in which a junior employee mentors a more senior leader - inverting the traditional direction of knowledge transfer. Senior leaders gain unfiltered insight into the lived experience of the organisation, including the barriers and blind spots that rarely survive intact as feedback travels up the hierarchy. Junior colleagues gain visibility, development, and direct access to leaders who can shape their careers. Eminere specialises in reverse mentoring because it is where Patrice Gordon’s practitioner expertise is deepest and most distinctive - and because the evidence for its impact is compelling: Deloitte’s research attributes 25% higher employee engagement and 20% improvements in leadership effectiveness to organisations with active reverse mentoring programmes.