About Us
Welcome to CPD UK—we're Ruth Taylor and Emma Stiles, co-founders, colleagues, and long-time champions of practitioner support in the world of nutritional therapy and coaching.
We founded CPD UK because we know first-hand the challenges that come with working in this field. Between us, we’ve worked in clinical practice, education, supervision, and corporate roles—so we understand the pressures, expectations, and moments of uncertainty that can arise at every stage of your professional journey.
Whether you’re a nutritional therapist, health coach, or functional medicine practitioner, we’ve seen how easy it is to feel isolated in your work. Through our experience and research, it’s become clear that what makes the biggest difference isn’t just more information—it’s connection, trusted support, and a non-judgemental space to grow.
That’s exactly what CPD UK is here to offer.
We’ve built a supportive, ego-free environment where you can share openly, sense-check your thinking, learn from experienced peers, and stay on top of the latest evidence—all while being part of a genuinely collaborative community.
We're proud to lead a team of kind, knowledgeable professionals who believe in raising standards without raising barriers.
Wherever you are in your journey, welcome to CPD UK. We’re so glad you’ve found us.
Meet The Team
Take a look at our practitioner mentors—we’re so proud of this team.
At CPD UK, our mentors are the heart of what we do. Each one brings a unique mix of clinical insight and professional experience—as educators, clinicians, academics, writers, authors, and podcast presenters. They've taught in leading institutions, contributed to the evidence base, and supported countless practitioners in finding their feet and flourishing.
But it’s not just their expertise that sets them apart—it’s their passion, generosity, and shared belief in lifting others up.
We’re incredibly proud of this team. We have fun working together, we challenge and inspire each other, and we’re all united by one goal: helping you reach your full potential. So you can do your best work, support your clients with confidence, and help raise the standard of our profession as a whole.
This is the team behind CPD UK—and we’re so glad to share them with you.
Emma Stiles
Emma has always had a keen interest in food, cooking for her family from age 7. She trained as a chef and worked in Central London with the Conran Restaurant group. This led to a deeper interest in how food worked with the body.
After completing a BSc (hons) in Nutritional Therapy at the University of Westminster, she became Senior Lecturer and Senior Clinic Supervisor at Westminster for 14 years. This lead to experience in a very wide range of clinical subjects through casework in the student clinic.
Alongside her educator role, she opened her consultancy, holding food and nutrition talks with charities. She has worked with several school caterers, improving school dinners and trained school cooks and childminders in food and nutrition. She sees clients in her practice and has corporate clients working in recipe development and staff training. She is now Course Lead at the University of West London Nutritional Therapy undergraduate degree.
Emma was Chair of BANT for 5 years and started the CPD process within the organisation. Emma has been a BANT Accredited Professional Supervisor since 2017, running online and face-to-face supervision groups where practitioner development is the cornerstone of a thriving practice.
Emma is a founder of CPD-UK, alongside Ruth Taylor. They started the company as they wanted to maintain the Supervision scheme and offer practitioners a space for growth and development - she is passionate about working together, sharing knowledge and building a community to forward the profession and support practitioners.
Ruth Taylor
Ruth has been an active Nutritional Therapist since 2009, a Registered Nurse with over 30 years of clinical experience, and a qualified professional supervisor since 2014. She is passionate about helping people—whether clients or practitioners—achieve their best.
As co-founder and co-director of CPD UK, alongside Emma, their mission is to support the nutrition profession through high-quality, practical education. Running clinical supervision, weekly clinical conversations, and expert case discussions that help practitioners grow in confidence, develop clinical skills, and learn with and from one another—ultimately enhancing client outcomes.
When not working in this role, Ruth works as the nutritionist with Boots Online Doctor and sees one-to-one clients in clinic. She believes those who supervise and train others should stay active in the field—we don’t just talk the talk, we walk it too.
Lorraine Nicolle
Lorraine has been practicing nutritional therapy for over 20 years (following a previous career in corporate communications), and her clinical work is focused on
individuals with complex, chronic conditions, such as gastrointestinal, cardiovascular or musculoskeletal disorders; as well as those seeking help during and after medical
treatment for cancer.
As a qualified Higher Education teacher, Lorraine teaches clinical nutrition to undergraduates (over the years at West London University, Greenwich University,
Northampton University, ION, BCNH and CNELM); and she enjoys engaging with practitioners as an accredited clinical supervisor (currently with www.cpd-uk.com); and through delivering CPD seminars/webinars on behalf of commercial healthcare organisations (currently as the Education Lead for Pharma Nord UK). She has authored/edited several nutrition books and is on the editorial board of The
Nutritional Medicine Journal.
Lorraine is passionate about "mechanisms": how does the human body/brain work, how can nutrition interventions alter this, and how can we make sense of the ever-changing evidence base to best help students, practitioners and patients to benefit in the real world?
Helen Lynam
Helen is a BANT Nutritional Therapist, educator and supervisor.
Helen spent her first career as an Engineer with British Airways, Having lost one close member of her family to chronic disease she was inspired to study nutrition when another close family member overcame a dire prognosis through dietary changes and supplementation.
As a Nutritional Therapist for almost 20 years, Helen has established herself with a busy private clinic, seeing clients with a range of disorders and specialising in Chronic Fatigue and Long Covid.
Helen has also contributed to the Functional Medicine series of books, she supervises and mentors fellow nutritional therapists, works corporately as a performance specialist and as a nutritional advisor for a catering company.
Helen is also a master NLP practitioner and brings those skills to all her work, particularly with clients and colleagues.
Steph Weekes
Steph qualified with distinction from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION) in 2015 and has since combined private practice with part-time work at Nuffield Health. Her roles at Nuffield have provided invaluable clinical experience, working closely with both fitness and clinical teams across a variety of settings. She has also led Healthy Weight programmes and delivered health seminars for major organisations including Amex, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Barclaycard, and Bank of America.
Steph has a particular interest in digestive health, stress management, and energy optimisation—areas shaped by her own experience of juggling long hours in design agencies while training at a high level in Ultimate Frisbee. This personal journey into nutrition underpins her empathetic and client-centred approach.
Passionate about personal development and reflective practice, Steph has embraced professional supervision for many years and facilitates supervision groups, supporting practitioners to gain the full benefit from this transformative process.
More recently, Steph has qualified as a Metabolic Balance practitioner and taken on a role of Clinical Supervisor at the University of West London (UWL), further broadening her professional scope and impact.
Carmel Buckley
Carmel graduated from the University of Westminster in 2004 with an Honours degree in Nutritional Therapy. She previously worked at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION) as Clinical Development Manager with responsibility for the clinical practice component of the 3-yeardiploma course.
She currently supervises in the teaching clinic there. Her private practice offers nutrition consultancy, working with individuals, and designing and delivering courses and
workshops to corporate clients.
Carmel has been a BANT accredited supervisor since 2014 running in-person and online groups.
She also has extensive experience of running reflective practice groups for both students and tutors. Her encounters with the personal and professional development that the supervision process brings to herself and the practitioners she works with, is powerful, rewarding, at times moving, and ultimately inspirational and affirming.
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