Dr Rebecca (Becs) Winterborn Executive & Leadership Coach for Senior Healthcare Professionals
The Architect of Change
Whether you are a medical doctor, a surgeon, a consultant, or a senior clinical leader navigating burnout, the growing gap between your professional identity and organisational reality, or the quiet question of what comes next, Dr Becs Winterborn is THE executive and leadership coach who understands it from the inside. After 28 years in the NHS, 11 as consultant vascular surgeon, she now works with individuals, teams, and organisations through 1:1 coaching, group coaching, training, and retreats, helping senior healthcare professionals reconnect with who they are beneath the role.
Speaker · Coach · Retreat Leader · Storyteller · Change Maker
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I had always prided myself on 'being authentic' at work. People often commented that I was ‘not your typical vascular surgeon'. I wanted to show that it was possible to break the stereotype, however, now I recognise that it came at a cost.
Through coaching, I learnt that there is another way, and I am so excited to be able to offer more people the gift of ripping off the mask and armour to reveal their true purpose, talents, and identity.
I now dedicate my time to uplifting and empowering senior healthcare professionals, teams and organisations, navigating the unseen dynamics that shape their lives.
Whether that is the growing gap between professional identity and organisational reality, the emotional cost of sustained pressure or the quiet, urgent question of what comes next.
I am here to support YOU.
Reveal your true purpose, talents and identity.
“Through following my values and understanding my unique talents and abilities I have experienced more joy at work than ever before. I know that if I look after myself first, the rest will follow.”
Create a culture of positivity and hope with your team
Experience the gift of ripping off your mask and armour
Identify your values and remember the real you
From the operating theatre to the space between people.
Hi, I am Dr Becs Winterborn Architect of Change
THE coach for heart-led leaders
For 25 years I stood at operating tables in rooms where the stakes were absolute and the margin for error was zero. I was trained to project confidence, competence, and certainty. To hold the room. To decide quickly and bear the weight of what I had decided.
What I was not trained to do, what almost no one in healthcare is trained to do, was to acknowledge what all of that was costing me and those I love the most.
Because the system does not ask for that kind of honesty. It asks for performance. And for a long time, I gave it.
“Healthcare professionals are not simply dealing with pressure or burnout. Many are experiencing a profound identity crisis, inside systems that expect them to serve at all cost in organisations that are fragmented and disconnected.”
I experienced that transformation from the inside out. I know the gap between professional identity and organisational reality, not as a concept, but as something I lived with, worked alongside, and eventually had to stop and face.
When I did, everything changed.
My decision to leave surgery was deliberate and from a place of joy not despair. And I began the work I was always meant to do, helping healthcare professionals and teams make sense of the hidden pressures they are working under, and supporting them to stay with the tension of competing demands, long enough for real change to emerge.
Not by becoming more resilient to unsustainable conditions. By becoming more honest about what those conditions are costing them and what is possible on the other side of that honesty.
“Many healthcare professionals are carrying far more than workload. They are carrying contradiction.”
They are carrying the contradiction between who they are and what the system asks them to be. Between the values that brought them into medicine and the realities that greet them every day. Between the professional they have become and the person they still sense themselves to be underneath.
And it is almost entirely invisible.
My work is about making it visible, so that healthcare professionals can move from unconscious adaptation to conscious and joyful participation. So they can recover choice, integrity, agency, and a more human way of working.
Not by becoming more resilient to unsustainable conditions.
But by staying with the tension of competing demands long enough for something new to become visible.
Work with Me
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Inspirational speaker
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1:1 Coaching
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Training and group coaching
What is executive coaching for healthcare professionals?
FAQs
1
It's coaching that addresses the specific pressures of clinical and leadership roles in healthcare - burnout, identity, decision fatigue, and the gap between who you are and what the system asks of you - alongside standard leadership and career development.
Senior healthcare professionals - surgeons, consultants, clinical leaders - as well as the teams and organisations around them.
2
Who do you coach?
Do you offer speaking engagements?
3
Yes - for conferences, hospitals, and leadership events, on identity, burnout, and change in healthcare.
Do you work with teams and organisations, or only individuals?
4
Both. Alongside 1:1 coaching, I run training and group coaching for healthcare teams and organisations.
How is coaching different from therapy?
5
Coaching focuses on unlocking someone's potential and moving forward towards the future, while therapy focuses on healing past wounds and treating mental health conditions.
What is your background?
6
So far, I have spent 28 years in the NHS, 11 as a Consultant vascular surgeon. I trained as a coach in 2021 because I am passionate about the value it brings to individuals and organisations navigating change.