Our History

Alastair Grant & Ewan Pearson founded Grant Pearson & Co as a partnership, at Premier House in Victoria, London W1 on 11th November 1993. The principal activities were coaching and advising on presentation skills, with a small amount of work in media training then negotiation skills.

On 1st April 1994 it became Grant Pearson Brown & Co with the introduction of Nigel Brown, as a Partner, and due to the length of the full name became known colloquially as “GPB”, this was reinforced with the design of a new square blue logo. In  July 1996, Ewan Pearson went to Sydney Australia to establish an office for GPB there, which then merged with an established business, Black Isle Consulting Pty Ltd, with GPB taking a 33% shareholding therein.

During the remainder of the 1990s the firm expanded in staff and client numbers, and expanded into related skill areas such as selling and business development. On 30th June 1999, Ewan Pearson returned from Australia to re-invigorate the London firm.

On 10th November 2003 the company incorporated, so changed its name to “Grant Pearson Brown Consulting Ltd”.

Over the 2000-2009 decade, GPB continued to expand its offering and develop stronger, deeper and longer relationships with its clients, working on a number of prestigious projects such as FTSE-100 audit pitches for one of the “Big 4” auditing firms, the London 2012 Olympic Bid in 2003-2005, working with Lord Coe and his top team, a project which culminated in a successful bid presentation on 6th July 2005 in Singapore. GPB also worked successfully with a number of the bosses of Private Equity firms who gave evidence under tough questioning from the panel, to the Treasury Select Inquiry in the Summer of 2007. During that decade, GPB formed an enduring bond with an Associate in Geneva, the Vox Institute, which has developed a unique scientific analysis of vocal and visual communication.

In the Spring of 2010 we opened an Oslo office, run by Tim Farish, a director of the company who had chosen to live there. This introduced a certain ‘Scandi’ bias to the work and clients we work with.

In the decade starting in 2010, GPB has continued to advise many significant clients on often confidential and major projects, such as the successful 2011 bid for ‘London 2017’ – the World Athletics Championships, the launch of a hugely-important drug for the improvement of treatment in diabetes throughout the world, and one more successful Olympic bid. We filled in the gaps with a solid amount of training groups of people and coaching individuals to become much more effective communicators. Client assignments took place in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australasia. Whilst not busy on client work, we developed the third and final strand in our scientific analyses – Content Analysis, which means GPB is now unique in the world as a provided of scientific analysis of all three components of spoken communication: content, voice and visual.

In November 2013 the firm celebrated 20 years in business, seeing off 2 recessions and a Global Financial Crisis in the process, and having developed a reputation for excellence in its client work alongside continual innovation and research that has developed our intellectual property to new highs.

In October 2014, we hired Richard Keith as a Consultant from a Client Relationship role at Vardags, the family law firm. In May 2018, Richard moved to an Associate Consultant position, so that he could study for a PhD, and take on a variety of roles in the acting profession.

In October 2018, we appointed two new consultants, Ms. Hasnae Kerach and Mr. Desmond Harney. Hasnae joined us from News Corporation; before that she worked in Client Account Management for Immediate Media, and for a variety of British and Dutch firms. Desmond joined from several roles in interim management and before that various roles in Business Development including Energizer and Diageo.