Jo Topfer

Graduate Diploma of Counselling

Completed: 2003

Specialisations: Counselling, Sport & Performance Psychology

Study mode(s): Sydney Campus

State: NSW

Following three years in various human resource positions within the financial sector, I became a management consultant with Coopers & Lybrand in 1989. Over the past fourteen years, I have worked with both public and private sector clients on issues pertaining to leadership and executive coaching and development, change management, strategy and cultural change facilitation and project management.

At a professional level, ACAP has benefited me professionally by strengthening my existing consultant's tool kit through:

• Providing me with a broad theoretical overview of key psychological principles (I focussed on organisational rather than clinical or behavioural Psychology in my previous degrees)
• Giving me an opportunity to both practice and challenge my NLP based training and facilitation techniques
• Broadening my epistemology so I now have more options in how I choose to work with a client
• Enriching my understanding of the similarities and differences between counselling, coaching and psycho-therapy and how these should be applied in a corporate setting
• Helping me draw together my various disparate learnings.

For example: my graduate and under-graduate University studies; practical consulting and HR experience; NLP based training; experiences as a partner, mother and family member and to develop a more integrated and powerful perspective and set of techniques; boosting my confidence levels. The single most impressive thing for me about ACAP was the combination of practical and theoretical training. Now I plan to continue to gradually build my business, particularly in the area of executive/performance coaching and development.