What stays with you is how they made you feel.
Believe didn't start in a strategy session. It started with a debt. Every person behind this work was shaped by someone who cared fiercely enough to change the course of what they became. That debt doesn't fade. It turns into what you do with the rest of your career. This page is about that, and about why it's the right foundation for work this serious.
Each of us is here because someone cared fiercely enough to help us excel.
Every person on this team was shaped by a fierce carer. Someone who saw something in them they couldn't yet see in themselves. Who pushed them further than felt comfortable, stayed alongside when stepping away would have been easier, and helped them become something they hadn't imagined being. Steve Black calls it HOPE: Help Other People Excel. Every one of us had someone who did exactly that.
Some of those people are still with us. Some we've lost. And what you learn, when you lose someone who cared for you like that, is that what they gave you doesn't end with them. It lives in the choices you make afterwards. In how you show up for the people around you. In whether you pass the gift on or let it stop with you.
That is what Believe is. Not a response to a market, not a pivot from something else. A decision, made by people who know what fierce care does to a life, to spend the rest of their careers putting it back into the world at scale.
Paying it forward, through every organisation we work alongside.
Fierce care ripples. The person who cared fiercely for you shaped how you care for the people around you, and they shape the people around them. Done well, that chain runs long and wide, and it reaches people who never met whoever started it.
Every organisation that builds fierce care into how it works extends that gift to everyone its decisions reach: the people it leads, the communities it works in, the partners it depends on. That is what sustainability looks like at its deepest level, and the legacy is what's left once it's been earned: a way of treating people that outlives the people who started it. That's what we're building towards, one leadership team at a time.
Different tracks. Same debt.
Two co-founders who learnt fierce care from different angles, who won't teach what they haven't lived, and who chose to do this together because the work is better with both of us in it.
Liz Byrne
CEO & Co-FounderLiz has spent her career in some of the most demanding organisational environments there are. Senior roles in policing and at His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, where she inspected forces across the country. Leading change in conditions where the work had to land, because communities felt it directly when it didn't. Lifting forces out of special measures when the easier option at every turn was to manage decline. Building governance that held under intense public scrutiny, across sectors that had every reason not to trust each other.
What Liz brings isn't a framework she studied. It's the discipline of knowing what fierce care looks like when the stakes are real, the room isn't sympathetic, and the people watching are the ones who've been let down before.
Tony Underwood
Co-Founder & Chief Empowerment OfficerTony's career has run through elite sport and commercial aviation. A decade with England and the British and Irish Lions. Two decades in the air, from First Officer to Captain on the A380. Each of those environments tested fierce care where the alternative wasn't an option: where standards weren't negotiable, where the culture of a team was the difference between a result and a crisis, and where care had to be fierce because there was no room for it to be anything else.
What Tony brings is the inside psychology of high-performance environments, built across thirty years in teams where the margin for weak leadership was zero, and translated now for the leaders we work alongside.
Alongside them stands a board and a specialist network built around the same conviction. People who've spent careers inside the systems this work has to change.
Emma Black
ChairBuilt Cascade Cash Management from her kitchen table into a business administering over £2bn of UK cash savings. Multi-award-winning entrepreneur, PhD from Durham, sustainable business from Harvard.
Paul Mackings
DirectorFour decades building businesses across the North East, from Newcastle Falcons to hospitality, property and regeneration. Brings commercial depth, real local relationships, and a clear-eyed view of how development and community actually interact.
Richard Spencer
DirectorChartered town planner, regeneration specialist, destination marketing professional. Brings rigour and place-based thinking to where social value investment should actually land.
Karen Taylor
Shared Value LeadFormer Amazon Global HR Director with over 20 years building inclusive growth strategies. Created the Welcome Door programme at Amazon, one of the most significant employer-led refugee hiring initiatives in Europe.
Jo Duffy
Data & Digital LeadTrained at the Cambridge Centre for Evidence-Based Policing. Works with public sector organisations, procurement teams and community partners to turn raw data into clear local intelligence that holds up to scrutiny.
Lesley Makin
Impact Lead25 years in frontline youth work and voluntary sector leadership. Leads Seen Heard Believe, a CIC focused on co-production, making sure young people's voices genuinely shape the services that affect them.
Justin Lambert
Procurement AdvisorDirector of Procureright, with over 20 years at the sharp end of procurement reform. Former Chair of MSDUK and Director at WEConnect International, opening up supply chains that were never designed to be inclusive.
Darren Knowd
Procurement & Social ValueCEO of DRKnowd Ltd and former Head of Procurement at Durham County Council. Helped shape the Procurement Act 2023. Over 30 years across General Motors, Nissan Europe and local government.
Peter Lillie
Sustainability & Commercial StrategyFounder of Double A Side Consulting and ICB Sustainability Strategy Programme Lead at NENC Integrated Care Board. Helps organisations balance profitability with purpose in practice, not just on paper.
Debbie Jones
Community & Youth LeadFormer CEO of a frontline youth service in Stockton, with over 15 years leading delivery in the voluntary and community sector.
Heidi Underwood
Accounts & Admin Manager & Chief Care EnforcerKeeps the business moving so Liz and Tony can focus on the work itself. Quietly essential. The fiercest of carers.
The work that matters, and what changed because of it.
A few of the organisations we've worked with. Hover any logo to see the work.
Case studyTees Maritime
A regional maritime cluster had built momentum as a funded project but plateaued — still run like a membership organisation when the sector needed one credible voice to shape investment and keep talent local. We came in as strategic partners: benchmarked against mature UK and EU clusters, rebuilt the strategy around policy influence and a shared talent pipeline, redesigned the governance to hold under pressure, and built a costed multi-year delivery and ROI plan. Within months they had a board-ready plan, a working governance framework and a confident board — moving from scattered individual efforts to a coordinated sector with real collective influence.
"…specialists in embedding social value as infrastructure, rather than an afterthought — built into how programmes are designed, delivered and sustained." Operations Director, Tees Maritime
Case studyNTH Solutions
An NHS procurement organisation handling hundreds of millions in annual spend wanted social value that genuinely tackled regional health inequality — not paperwork. We built a multi-agency steering group with real authority (NHS, councils, police, education, community organisations) and a single framework targeting procurement, Section 106 and regeneration around nine agreed outcomes. They are now leading a health-led, multi-agency approach not attempted before in the region, with public bodies aligning spend around shared outcomes.
"…a real opportunity to make a difference to the patients and communities we serve, with many cross-cutting issues affecting all of our local services." Director of Procurement and Supply Chain, NTH Solutions
Case studyTees Valley Combined Authority
A combined authority was delivering social value that wasn't reaching SMEs or community organisations — complex procurement locked smaller firms out, and VCSEs were treated as recipients, not partners. We ran SME development groups, built routes for community organisations to become suppliers and partners, and worked with the procurement team on fairness and proportionality — laying the groundwork for a regional "Social Value £". SMEs now see social value as opportunity, community organisations have genuine ways in, and a region-wide measure of impact is in development.
"…a really pragmatic framework enabling organisations of all sizes to shape, evidence and measure the impact of their inclusive growth and ESG strategies." Chair, Tees Valley Business Board
Case studyRichmond Bike Park
A community in a North Yorkshire market town — losing its young people, with a stark life-expectancy gap — had a dream of a world-class bike park but no structure to attract serious investment. We joined the delivery team: five accountable squads, a £250K budget built to fit procurement frameworks, and the project reframed for business through trail sponsorship, in-kind contributions and commercial partnerships rather than donations. Planning secured, funding near target, delivery scheduled for 2026.
£10k to £250k25x mobilised value, community-led throughout.
"…turned a local dream into investment-ready reality. This is what joined-up delivery looks like in practice." Community lead, Richmond CiC
Cleveland Police
A force under external scrutiny with a leadership culture in trouble. Liz led the cultural transformation that rebuilt how the force led itself: the governance, the accountability, the standard people held when no one was watching, and lifted it out of special measures.
Why Pagabo partnered with Believe.
Pagabo runs over £47 billion of public sector procurement frameworks, connecting more than a thousand local authorities and public bodies with the supply chains that build and maintain Britain's infrastructure. They already had Loop, their own social value technology. What they didn't have was the part that sits above the technology: the strategy, the community intelligence, and the coordination that turn data entry into change people can feel.
That gap is why they came to us. Social value tools tell you what happened. They log the activity, apply the proxy values, produce the report. What they can't do is decide what actually matters in a particular community, align a supply chain around it, or make the impact compound over time. That takes human expertise, local knowledge, and a method Pagabo knew they didn't have in-house.
So we bring community intelligence into the heart of how frameworks get used. Pagabo sets the standard and makes the introductions. Believe designs the strategy, coordinates the delivery, and makes sure the evidence is real, validated by communities themselves rather than self-reported by contractors. A partnership built on one shared belief: social value done properly doesn't cost more. It returns more.
We don't ask anything of the people we work with that we don't ask of each other.
Not taglines. The working principles that govern how the partnership runs, day to day and client to client.
Evidence over promises
Specific examples beat generic claims. We'd rather show you what worked elsewhere than tell you what we'll do for you.
The work over the brand
We'd rather build something that lasts than something that looks good this quarter. The brand is a by-product of the work.
Confidentiality as default
What's said in a senior coaching session stays there. Case studies and references are shared only with explicit agreement.
Saying no
If we don't think the work will land, whether because of timing, brief or readiness, we'll say so, even when it costs us the engagement.
Held to the same standard
The fierce care we ask for is the fierce care we ask of each other. We coach each other, and we hold each other to it. That's how we know it works.
Who we're not for.
Saying who we're not for is one of the ways we show the thing we ask of others. Honesty first. This won't be the right partnership if any of these sound familiar.
- You're looking for a quick fix or a comms exercise. Fierce care compounds over years, not quarters.
- The senior team won't sit in the room. If the people whose decisions shape the culture won't be in the work, the work won't change the culture.
- You want to outsource accountability. We coach alongside leaders. We don't take the hard conversations off your plate.
- You want a firm that knows your industry better than you do. We bring the discipline of fierce care. You bring the context. Anyone claiming to do both is selling something.
- You've already decided you're getting it right. The most generative people we work with are the ones honest enough to say they're not as fierce as they claim.
If you believe in fierce care, come and build it with us.
All you need to bring is that belief. Tell us what you're up against, and we'll be straight about whether we're the right people to help. That's all the first conversation needs to be.