Mike Buchanan is the Founder of Positively Leading, a bespoke business-strategy and coaching & mentoring consultancy focused on understanding, improvement and fulfilment. He has been supporting school & college leaders for more than a decade as well as acting as a reviewer, improvement partner and leadership developer.

Mike’s interests and experiences are in organisational culture and climate, business strategy, coaching for improved performance, leadership, inspection, character development, the use of positive psychology to promote well-being in education and the worldwide educational landscape.

He is Executive Head of the world’s leading school for elite skiers – Apex2100 and was most recently the Executive Director of HMC, the English-speaking world’s oldest association of Head Teachers. For more than a decade as Head of Ashford School, he oversaw its transformation from a small girls’ school in decline to a thriving all-age, co-educational day/boarding school of over 1,000 children and young people.

Mike has held a variety of leadership posts in London and elsewhere. He helped to establish three state-funded schools in London and Kent. He is or has been a trustee of several independent and state schools in the UK and internationally, a trustee of a children’s charity, a Reporting Inspector, a UK National Leader of Education and a qualified Executive Coach. He is a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and Chair of the International Positive Education Network (UKEurope). Born and partially educated in Australia, he made the smart move of falling in love with an Englishwoman but regularly returns to God’s own country.