We are not a traditional consulting firm
Meet our Founders
Mark Ashton | Executive Director
Paula Grizzard | Executive Director
Achim Cremer | Executive Director
At the age of 28 Mark was posted from Northern England to Charlotte, North Carolina to run the US/Canada sales and service subsidiary of a UK machinery manufacturer. He describes it as a leadership baptism of fire. Over the next four years he recruited and led a team which grew the business from $6 million to over $20 million per annum, whilst facing major cultural and technical challenges.
Since returning to the UK Mark has worked for over 25 years as a business consultant supporting client companies on strategic growth projects in the USA and continental Europe. He founded his own consulting firm in 2007 and in the last few years has become a highly respected executive coach and mentor. He has worked extensively in Estonia, the Silicon Valley of Europe. Mark is a visionary, highly supportive leader with deep purpose and strong business development, relationship building, strategic thinking and team building skills.
“When you pick the people in life that you would have with you in the trenches, Mark would undoubtedly be on my list.”
Chief Financial Officer and Vice President International, £130 million UK manufacturing company
Paula led the Government Task Force in the city of Bradford to develop public-private partnerships and drive economic growth, before becoming the Chief Executive of the Rotherham Economic Partnership set up to regenerate the town after the Coal Closure Programme. She acted as an advisor to the UK Government’s Local Government and Communities Department, helping localities to develop robust economic strategies.
Paula set up her first venture – a consultancy practice – in the early 1990s and grew it into an international business winning contracts across Central and Eastern Europe where she worked for 10 years. She worked for 2 years in Ukraine helping to develop businesses and in Hungary helping the government there to set a strategy for inward investment and business growth following entry into the EU in 2004. Since then, she has worked in China and India and has established a network of partners across North America.
Paula works with senior directors and board members across a range of sectors to increase profitability and growth including expansion into international markets. She has worked extensively in the events industry facilitating conferences, trade fairs, workshops, and peer boards. She is qualified business coach. Her work has included business support programmes to support female founders with NatWest bank.
Paula’s clients include Advanced Logistics, La Redoute, Leeds Beckett University, the UK Government. She is an Executive in Residence at Sheffield Hallam University and Leader in Residence at the University of Leeds Business School.
Achim has a wealth of international experience across a breath of sectors – call centres, aviation, financial services and FMCG – having worked in senior manager positions in Finance, HR, Sales, Operations and IT for global brands including British Airways, Barclaycard, Coca-Cola, GE Money Bank, and Santander Bank.
He has a proven track record of delivering business change resulting in sustainable top and bottom-line growth and increased shareholder value. He has established a reputation for exemplary leadership and for developing greenfield and established businesses through sales, effective merging of acquisitions, efficiency and quality improvements.
In 2015, Achim founded his own consulting business. Since then he has helped many companies to achieve significant and sustainable efficiency improvements and to take the next evolutionary step. His methods, meaningfully complemented by neurolinguistic programming (NLP), are designed to achieve sustainable performance improvements and to raise the maturity level of the organisation.
In 2023, together with Mark Ashton and Paula Grizzard, Achim founded GO International to provide holistic consulting services to companies that want to expand and establish their business in new international markets.
“I would recommend Achim to any company needing a problem solver with extensive experience in professional management, but especially due to his excellent people management skills – leading, challenging and promoting good people.”
What makes us distinctive?
The GO International community has a powerful collaborative problem-solving culture and is dedicated to helping clients personally and collectively.
People who engage with us describe a feeling of energy, excitement and friendliness which they find assuring and contagious.
GO International is underpinned by a comprehensive understanding of the attitudes, behaviours and proven principles which characterise the top 1% most sustainably profitable businesses. When running projects for our clients:
• We build and sustain high performance by fostering working environments with high psychological safety in which EVERYONE can learn, contribute fully, be held appropriately accountable, and innovate by constructively challenging the status quo
• We teach leaders and managers how to model high performance behaviours, to coach their teams effectively, and to fulfil their own potential
• We improve the performance of teams through coaching, experiential training programmes, and structured problem-solving activities
• We seek to continuously improve our own performance by seeking feedback and acting on it