Nigel Cumberland


Nigel Cumberland is a British author, award-winning leadership coach, and a founder of The Silk Road Partnership. He is the author of nine self-development and leadership books, some of which have been serialised and translated into several foreign languages.

Early life and education

Brought up in the UK, Cumberland is British with a mother who was originally from Myanmar. Cumberland read Economics at Queens' College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 1989. He had come up to Cambridge from Archbishop Holgate's Grammar School in York. He later studied management accounting and since 2005 holds the Fellow title with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. He is trained and certified as a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coach.
in Dubai on 6 September 2015

Career

Earlier in his career Cumberland had been an expatriate Finance Director with Coats plc and also held managing director positions with groups such as Adecco SA. In 2000, he founded St. George's Consulting, a recruitment and coaching company with offices in Hong Kong and China. It merged with the Asian arm of Harvey Nash plc in 2003 and renamed St. George's Harvey Nash. firm was sold to UK recruitment company, Hays plc, in May 2006.
In 2006, Cumberland renamed the part of St. George's that he retained as The Silk Road Partnership which merged with the business in London of Philip Beddows. Cumberland provides leadership coaching, mentoring, training and facilitation for C-suite leaders and Board members through The Silk Road Partnership from his base in Asia, London, UK and Dubai, UAE.
Cumberland is an award-winning and Accredited Coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council,and at its request was part of a small working group which created an industry-wide Global Code of Ethics for coaches and mentors. He is also a Founding Fellow of the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Institute of Coaching.
Cumberland regularly writes in the media on career and leadership related topics. He is often interviewed for articles on similar topics. He is regularly invited to chair, facilitate and/or speak at various events.
Cumberland has also become a LinkedIn Learning author of self-help and leadership online training courses.

Volunteer and causes

In 2016, Cumberland was admitted to the Freedom of the City of London.
Cumberland founded a Hong Kong-based charity called The Getting Back to Work Foundation, in 2002, which helped job-seekers to find work.
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Cumberland had been a board member and the Treasurer of the International School of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, a not for profit parent governed school, for four years until about 2011.
Cumberland was quoted in different publications for his slightly controversial "You end up with boring adults" comment regarding the effects of poor parenting and nurturing of young people after he was interviewed and quoted by Carl Honoré in his 2008 book Under Pressure.