The English That Works Manifesto — I built this for you

Have you ever overheard a conversation that changed your life?

It’s 2024. I’m in Malaga, sitting in a Japanese style pod hostel at the tail end of a four week trek from Madrid to Casablanca and back up through soulful Seville. Behind me, a girl is on a business call. Sharp London accent, clearly marketing, working remotely from the Costa del Sol — basking in everything Malaga has to offer while the Mediterranean flickers through the window.

One question hit me and wouldn’t leave: “How do I achieve that?”

That question set everything in motion. Not just a career break. Not just a TEFL course. A realisation that after nine years navigating one of the most politically charged environments you could find; securing funding, managing egos, writing briefings that had to land first time because people’s homes depended on them, I had built a set of skills that could help people beyond the rooms I’d been fighting in.

I am not a linguist. I am not a career coach. I am someone who has spent nearly a decade learning how to get the right thing done in rooms full of competing agendas, and who has the scars to prove that communication under pressure is a skill you earn, not a talent you’re born with.

I’ve secured over £5 million in funding for frontline services. Not because my grammar was perfect, but because I learned to say the right thing, to the right person, at the right moment and to stay quiet when staying quiet was the harder, smarter choice.

I’ve also failed. Spectacularly. I’ve written the perfect email and then destroyed it by panicking on the phone - rambling, over-explaining, sounding desperate instead of authoritative. I’ve walked into a parliament building carrying a leather folder to project confidence, only to have that confidence collapse the moment someone challenged me. I leave the mess visible because the mess is what makes everything else credible.

This is who I built English That Works for.

You are brilliant at your job. Your manager knows it. Your work is sharp and your thinking is sound. But every morning you wake up and begin a process that doesn’t stop until you go to sleep - a constant, invisible effort to perform your competence in a language that isn’t yours.

Every email gets re-read four times before you hit send. Every meeting requires a split second calculation: do I have the right words to say this, or do I stay quiet and think of the perfect response twenty minutes later in the corridor? Every time a colleague says “let’s park that” or “I’ll loop you in,” you run a quiet translation in your head while the conversation moves on without you.

Nobody sees this effort. Nobody gives you credit for it. And the word “fluent”, the word on your CV, the word your colleagues assume applies to you is the cruellest word in your professional life. Because fluent doesn’t mean comfortable. Fluent doesn’t mean confident. Fluent means good enough that nobody notices you’re working twice as hard as everyone else in the room.

I see it. And I built this for you.

English That Works is built on five convictions.

Your expertise should never be hidden behind language. If you have the knowledge, you deserve the words to make it visible. You should not have to shrink yourself to fit a linguistic mould that was never designed for you.

Clarity is a skill, not a gift. It can be learned, practised, and sharpened. You do not need to be born into it. You need someone who has done it under pressure to show you the mechanics.

Practical beats perfect. There is no requirement to sound like a BBC newsreader. The goal is English that works in real situations so you are understood, respected, and effective. Your accent is not a flaw. Your accent is proof you are doing your job in more than one language.

The problem is often the workplace, not the speaker. Many organisations reward only one kind of English. They are poorer for it. You need the tools to navigate that environment on your own terms, not to change who you are.

Your constraints produce your clarity. Working in a second language forces a precision that native speakers with their unlimited word budgets and their autopilot phrases often lack. The most precise communicator I have ever worked with spoke English as her fourth language. She understood something most native speakers never learn: when you cannot waste a word, every word carries weight. That is not a disadvantage. That is a secret advantage.

I built English That Works because someone needs to say the thing that nobody in this industry says:

You are not behind. You are not broken. You do not need fixing.

You need someone who has been in the room where it happened who has written the briefing note, defused the meeting, talked down the ego, and failed publicly enough to know what recovery looks like and to stand beside you and say: here are the words. Here is how they sound. Here is how to walk into Monday’s meeting and be the person your expertise already says you are.

English That Works is for anyone who has ever felt lost, excluded, or exhausted by the way English is used at work.

Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

You already have the expertise. Let’s make it visible.