About The Parent Mentor

Nicki Seignot is a director of Purple Shark an independent coaching and development consultancy and creator of The Parent Mentor.

An established coach, mentor and working parent, Nicki’s specialist area of work relates to mentoring for new parents and supporting returning talent in businesses and organisations. She is the co-author of the first business book on parental mentoring ‘Mentoring New Parents at Work’ published by Routledge in 2017.

Nicki pioneered the introduction of maternity mentoring to the Asda Walmart Home Offices in 2011, where over 200 returners have been mentored to date.

Since then, Nicki’s work with The Parent Mentor includes the following arenas;

  • Professional services - Internal Career and Family Coaching and development of Mentoring for Parents
  • Publishing - Parental Mentoring Programmes and Mentoring Supervision
  • Banking – Workshop series for Working Parents and Line Managers
  • Retail - Executive Coaching for senior maternity returns
  • Working on behalf of David Clutterbuck Partnership Healthcare - Return to Work Mentoring and a Professional Association - Parental Mentoring and Mentoring Supervision.

In collaboration with EY LLP, Nicki developed an internal mentoring programme for working parents as part of the EY Family Network in the UK. Having this project shortlisted for the 2017 Working Families Awards and the Excellence in Diversity Awards 2017 was a professional milestone and fantastic piece of external recognition.

A passionate and informed speaker, Nicki has a track record of sharing ideas and best practice as follows:

  • Supporting working parents - Clutterbuck Associates’ (London 2012),
  • Internal Mentoring for New Parents - Coaching at Work conference (London 2013)
  • Case Study Seminar – Maternity Mentoring - Sheffield Hallam University (October 2014)
  • Royal Society of Chemistry Parental Mentoring Case Study Seminar - EMCC International Annual Conference (Istanbul, November 2015)
  • Keynote speaker at the BAWP (British Association for Women in Policing) Conference on International Women’s Day (West Yorkshire March 2017)
  • Mentoring Returning Talent - Huddersfield University Department of Management (March 2017)
  • CIPD West Yorkshire AGM (Leeds, May 2017)
  • Employer workshop - Kingstown College (Dublin, September 2017)
  • Mentoring Returns to Work - Sheffield City Council’s HR Forum in (November 2017)
  • Case Study Seminar with the Cooperative Bank and EHRC’s Working Forward. (Manchester February 2018)
  • Member of the House of Commons All Party Parliamentary Group for Women and work (October 2018 – to date)

Nicki posts regularly on LinkedIn. She also writes for a number of publications and journals, most recently a case study article entitled ‘Working Parenthood – how parents are creating work to suit their family life’ Training Journal May 2018.

In her practice she abides by the AoC and EMCC Global Code of Ethics and holds the following qualifications and memberships:

  • MSc (Distinction) in Coaching and Mentoring (Sheffield Hallam University 2013)
  • CIPD trained Career Coach (2010)
  • Professional Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)
  • Joint coordinator of the EMCC Yorkshire Network
  • Certified Strengthscope practitioner www.strengthscope.com
  • Margerison-McCann Team Management Profile Accreditation. TMS Development International Ltd www.tmsdionline.com/

Trusted associates

The Parent Mentor works with a small and trusted team of associates, each with skills and experience of coaching and mentoring in this space.

Our promise is you always get to work with the person you meet and connect with from The Parent Mentor. Like you, we’ve been purchasers of providers and services, so we know how it is when you engage with an individual and want to work with them specifically.