fran pestana

Fran Pestana is a Chartered Business Psychologist and leadership architect working with organisations where leadership and talent decisions carry material consequence.

Her work focuses on the design of critical roles, leadership decisions and talent systems, particularly in growing, regulated or scrutinised environments where informal approaches no longer hold.

What Fran is trusted with

Fran is most often engaged when organisations need to slow decisions down just enough to get them right, before cost, credibility or people are put at risk. Her work sits upstream of delivery, supporting leaders and organisations to:  

• Clarify roles with disproportionate impact 
• Make defensible promotion and succession decisions 
• Address systemic barriers affecting senior women and underrepresented leaders 
• Design leadership conditions that remain viable as complexity increases  

She is known for bringing clarity to situations that feel politically charged, strategically and emotionally complex or structurally unclear.  

Experience and perspective

Fran brings over 20 years’ experience across talent management, organisational development, leadership assessment and executive coaching.

Her background includes senior in-house leadership roles in complex organisations, including global energy and regulated environments, alongside research and consulting experience within higher education and public sector contexts.

This combination allows her to work with both psychological depth and practical organisational realism understanding how leadership actually functions under pressure, not just how it is intended to work.