Our Team
Our team is made up of Head Corporate Training, Deputy Head Corporate Training, Senior training consultants, Managers Corporate Training based in Delhi and Mumbai and a Language Testing Coordinator based in Chennai. Our consultants with a combined experience of forty years training and materials design in the corporate sector in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, are responsible for training and mentoring our dispersed team of highly qualified and experienced Training Consultants.
Philippa Baker
 Philippa Baker is Head Corporate Training, for the British Council India,based in Delhi where she manages corporate training with clients such as Barclays, Intelenet, Infosys and others. She works closely with CEOs and training managers to design and deliver training programmes which meet the strategic objectives as well as the everyday needs of the organisation.
During her 10-year career in English language teaching and training, Philippa has worked with corporate clients to develop their training programmes, with NGOs to design and deliver training for underprivileged youth, and with senior managers delivering 1-to-1 coaching. She has worked in contexts as diverse as Germany, Russia, Azerbaijan and Jordan, opening the British Council’s Professional Development Centre in Jordan in 2010. She has experience of working with the banking, hospitality, NGO and BPO sectors.
She is currently completing an MBA with a specialism in Education in Asia, and holds the International House Diploma in English Language Teaching Management, the Cambridge Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults, and a BA in Russian and Hungarian from University College London. She is a qualified IELTS examiner and DELTA local tutor, and has delivered teacher training programmes for the Ministries of Education in Palestine and Jordan.
Philippa has also worked in the M&A department of a major investment bank in London. Her special areas of interest are the BPO industry in India, design and delivery of corporate training interventions, and gender and the organization.
Vandana Jain
 Vandana Jain has extensive experience delivering training sessions for British Council’s clients such as Barclays, Infosys, Ranbaxy, Lanco. She comes with over 10 years of teaching, teacher training, examining and materials development experience in diverse contexts and sectors. Vandana is a Cambridge approved teacher trainer (CELTA), Examiner Trainer and has trained teachers for British Council in India, Afghanistan and the US.
Before moving to India, she was working with a private university in Japan as an English language lecturer. Vandana has the DELTA (Cambridge Exams) and an MA in TESOL from the USA. In her free time, she likes to listen to music, travel and volunteer with NGOs.
Sitharay Krishnan
 Sitharay Krishnan was born and brought up in Norway, studied and did her teacher training in London, and was finally drawn to discover her roots in India, where she's now happily settled. She has taught and delivered training in Europe, Asia, and North America. Sitharay has, over the years, worked with students of various academic levels and age groups, from young learners/teenagers to medical practitioners and professionals in the corporate sector. She was part of the original British Council team that first launched corporate training in Chennai and has worked with the Council for almost 8 years. She has designed and delivered professional development courses for a number of organisations, such as The Hindu group of publications, Barclays, Hewitt, Unicef, Linguista international language schools and Larsen & Toubro. In addition to a Masters degree in Linguistics, she also has several teaching and training qualifications, notably a postgraduate diploma in ELT, the Cambridge CELTA and the BCTC (Business Cultural Trainers Certificate) from IH, London.
Sitharay has also delivered a range of professional development workshops to Indian teachers as part of her personal interest in teacher training.Sitharay is currently based out of Chennai.
Amrita Mann
 Amrita Mann has worked as a trainer for the British Council for over 10 years. She was brought up in England and has travelled to Europe, Asia and the Middle East to live and work as a trainer. Now she has settled down in India and has been working as a corporate trainer, teacher trainer, materials developer and an English language examiner for Cambridge. Some of the clients that she has worked with in the corporate sector include Nokia, HCL, Barclays, Watson Wyatt, Macquarie. Amrita holds a BA in English and a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults).
Vinodh Philip
 Vinodh Philip, an HR graduate from the Madras School of Social Work is a friendly and approachable human resource developer and trainer. The wide experience he has had in the IT service and product industry varies from the creative to the logical and from problem-solving to crisis management. Being an excellent communicator both visually and verbally, Vinodh combines audio, visual and kinesthetic methods in all his approaches. He uses his experience as a member of the oldest amateur English theatre group in India to bring theatre techniques in his programmes for the benefit of his class.
Being a CELTA certified trainer, Vinodh also has the right blend of skill and knowledge for training groups of adults and children. His language teaching focuses on reading, writing, speaking and listening skills with particular attention being paid to aspects of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation which facilitate effective communication.
Vinodh has conducted workshops and training in all the organisations he has worked which include Areva, dotCue Technologies, Xerago Ebusiness, Changepond Technologies, L&T, Elsevier, NIOT, VA TECH WABAG and Cognizant. He is also a regular guest teacher in The Madras School of Social Work and the University of Madras and a registered corporate trainer and language teacher with the British Council, Chennai.
Rochelle Simon
 Rochelle Simon is English and Digital Communications Coordinator based in Chennai. She began her career in 1998 and has worked across a variety of organisations and sectors. In 2008 she joined the British Council Project English Department. Rochelle leads, manages and coordinates all Language Testing based on the Common European Framework for clients throughout India and abroad. Her extensive experience in this area includes mangement of Language tests done for organisations such as Barclays, Nokia Siemens Networks, Talk Talk, Ford,Oberoi and State Government Teachers of Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Nagaland and Pondicherry.
Rochelle holds a BA in English and a PG Diploma in Human Resource Management. An avid reader she also spends her time on shopping and social networking.
Christina Mishra
 Christina was born in London and has been a language trainer and examiner most of her career with a particular focus on language acquisition and assessment .Her 1st class Honours in French, Diploma in Education (English and Modern Languages) from UWA, Australia, was followed by the RSA Diploma in TESL and Certificate in TESOL.
She was a lecturer with Adult Migrant Education in Western Australia, a trainer with The Bell School, Norwich and Embassy International Language School , London, in the UK before joining the British Council Teaching Centre in Sana’a, Yemen, followed by her posting to the British Council, New Delhi. Throughout most of her time as a teacher with the British Council she has also been a course designer and an IELTS examiner and examiner trainer.
In India, along with corporate language training assignments with companies such as McKenzie, Wipro, ITC, Mahanadi Coal, Sigma Pharmaceuticals, she has contributed to Project English, training English teachers in Delhi and to a number of British Council in-house training programmes.Her interests apart from languages include travel, reading, writing and horseriding.
Lawrence Smith
 Lawrence Smith was born and brought up in London, England. He was educated at Dulwich College and the University of Sussex, where he was awarded a first-class degree in English.
He has worked in education for 13 years. He has worked as a corporate trainer, academic manager, English teacher, teacher trainer and materials developer in locations as diverse as Hong Kong, Vietnam, Nepal, Taiwan, Zimbabwe, China and Spain. Lawrence has completed the Cambridge DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults), achieving distinction status in this. He has also completed the Young Learners extension to the Cambridge certificate. He is currently undertaking a distance MBA with Durham University.
He is a qualified IELTS examiner for both the speaking and writing modules and is also a Cambridge YLE examiner.
Anun Jayachandran
 Anun Jayachandran is Manager Corporate Training, based in Mumbai. Anun began his career in 2000 and has worked with some of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India. In 2005 he joined the British Council exams department as Marketing Manager for the West India region and was responsible for promoting the IELTS and CESOL exams to all clients in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa. He moved to the corporate training team in October 2011.
Anun holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Mumbai University and a MBA Marketing from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland.
Asha Sandilya
 Asha Sandilya is a Freelance Corporate Trainer based out of Mumbai. Asha has over thirty years experience in teaching English and Communication Skills. She works as a corporate trainer specialising in business communication, writing and speaking skills. She is also the course head, journalism at the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai.
Asha also works with the British Council and the University of Cambridge ESOL as an examiner, examiner trainer and a teacher trainer for teacher support programmes and the CELTA. She headed the multimedia lesson development centre at IL&FSETS, bringing technology training and content into classrooms in India. She has taught language and editing skills at South Bombay colleges and been paper setter and moderator for the university and the IIM CAT .She has taught young learners and adults in Ghana and India.
She has an MA in Eng. Lit, postgraduate certificate and diploma in English language teaching from EFLU Hyderabad, a Diploma in Higher Education, a Diploma in Journalism and a certificate in EFL testing from the University of Indiana.
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