About

Bar­rier Break­ers, foun­ded in 2000 by Penelope Tobin, is an organ­isa­tion ded­ic­ated to inspir­ing human devel­op­ment. Ori­gin­ally estab­lished as a char­ity, the ‘for-more-than-profit’ com­pany was set-up in 2010 to spread the suc­cess of our approach to other sec­tors, while feed­ing profits back into the char­it­able arm.

Both sides of Bar­rier Break­ers’ work are dir­ec­ted by the founder, in close col­lab­or­a­tion with asso­ci­ates, part­ners and train­ers, as well as trust­ees and volun­teers. Since 2000, numer­ous highly skilled indi­vidu­als, experts in their own fields and united by a belief in the power of soft skills, have col­lab­or­ated on pro­jects under the Bar­rier Break­ers umbrella, help­ing to shape BBM by using it in lead­er­ship, per­sonal, man­age­ment, and organ­isa­tional devel­op­ment pro­jects, coach­ing ses­sions, edu­ca­tion pro­grammes, and con­sultancy. This gives us an extraordin­ary pool of trus­ted and tal­en­ted pro­fes­sion­als to draw on, so we can provide cli­ents with top-quality teams cre­ated spe­cific­ally for their pro­ject and tailored to their needs.

We aim for a global reach while being ‘loc­a­tion inde­pend­ent’, a descrip­tion that entails some poetic license, as we’re based in Lon­don, Eng­land. But we cir­cum­vent the need for a cum­ber­some busi­ness premises by enga­ging new media and cur­rent tech­no­logy as our ‘HQ’. This solu­tion brings bene­fits all round, allow­ing us to be extremely nimble and respons­ive to client’s needs, to attract the best people to work in highly focused, motiv­ated teams, and to pass on the fin­an­cial bene­fit to our cli­ents, while sup­port­ing our char­it­able endeav­ours. We also think that this new way of work­ing is bet­ter for the envir­on­ment, and that’s import­ant to us.

Our guid­ing prin­ciples begin with a com­mit­ment to soft skills devel­op­ment, believ­ing that the world has changed, and these pre­vi­ously under-represented skills are now key to per­sonal and organ­isa­tional well-being and suc­cess.
We believe that soft skills need to be man­aged, developed and meas­ured in entirely new ways – not in ways designed for 20th cen­tury skills – and that BBM is the solu­tion that sup­ports this vis­ion. This approach allows us to inspire change from the inside out – releas­ing the full cap­ab­il­ity of indi­vidu­als and organ­isa­tions by identi­fy­ing and remov­ing bar­ri­ers that block their poten­tial. And because soft skills devel­op­ment enriches every­one, we use profits to sub­sid­ise our char­it­able projects.

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