The Rebel Team

Get to know the Rebel Team and find out what makes them tick outside of starting businesses.

Learn Something Every Day

A team built up of friends and experts, we travel the world running the Rebel Business School to help people start-up their own businesses, doing what they love.

Most of the team have run their own business, made their own mistakes and learnt what to do and what not to do in real business. We have all come together to help you get going and make money doing what you love!

Co-Founder and CEO

Simon Paine

Simon spent ten years as a police officer and the next ten experimenting with business, the music industry and occasionally a proper job. He set up a centre for entrepreneurship, ran a regional enterprise service for Business Link before heading-up client services for a leadership consultancy. Simon started Rebel with Alan in 2011.

He has coached, trained and facilitated senior leaders from some of the world’s most famous companies including Microsoft, British Airways, and Thomson Reuters.

Outside of Rebel he is the frontman of a band, makes art, drinks coffee from the Yemen and cooks up new ideas – which includes being the founder of forever27.co.uk. Also as a Dad of three boys he watches a lot of sport, operates an unlicensed parent taxi service and avoids DIY.

Co-Founder and Showrunner

Alan Donegan

Alan founded Rebel in 2011 with Simon after they thought there must be a better way to start a business, without debt and without formal business plans.

Nothing is more rewarding for Alan than seeing other people flourish. His past experience in business gives him the drive to enable anyone, no matter what their circumstances, to live the life they want in personal and financial freedom. Alan heads up our podcast ‘The Rebel Entrepreneur‘, supporting entrepreneurs around the world.

Outside Rebel, Alan loves Marvel, making pizza and occasionally playing with Lego. He is also a regular speaker for the “Financial Independence, Retire Early” (FIRE) movement, which has given him the freedom to enact lifelong ambitions of writing movie scripts and travel the world with his wife Katie as part of a nomadic lifestyle.

Lead facilitator

Katie Coombes

Katie is a lead trainer and delivers our courses all over the UK.

She co-founded, scaled and sold a successful events business over 15 years before joining Rebel in the Summer of 2018. The business was started with no money, but plenty of blood, sweat and tears were shed along the way.

She loves the first day of the Rebel course, especially the moments when people realise that this is not another boring business course and it talks sense about real life.

When not running the courses for Rebel, she is a speaker and mentor helping people grow their existing businesses.

As well as all this, she is a busy mum to two fantastic young people, so she can often be found doing the washing, sweeping the floor, eating crisps and watching Netflix (all at the same time).

ALUMNI SUPPORT and Facilitator

Halima Salim

Halima is a Rebel facilitator and also takes care of Rebel Alumni once they complete the course.

She has previously spent thousands of pounds on online and face-to-face courses and it’s satisfying for her to know that the Rebel School does it all for free and to help thousands of businesses build the life they want.

She enjoys going to the theatre and drinking exquisite coffee. She also enjoys traveling, having visited 30 countries, and eating food from all over the world.

She also has her own business teaching English as a second language to women from all over the world.

FACIILITATOR

Angie Beeston

Angie is a Rebel facilitator and loves to help people take the next step and take lasting action.

Offering Executive Coaching & Mentoring, Leadership Programmes, Career/ Outplacement Coaching, Facilitation, Team Building, Business Mentoring, and bespoke training courses to support all sizes of companies – from global organisations to SME’s.

Angie specialises in helping you to find clarity and focus to get you and your business moving, improve leadership, people development and enhance team building.

Through the Evolution 4 Business brand and Rebel Courses, Angie provides professional training, coaching and mentoring to inspirational business owners.

Head of Brand Experience & Logistics

Jack Aling

Jack heads up Rebel’s Branding and Logistics.

Jack joined Rebel in 2016 after completing a TV and Film Media degree with the role of creating content, which quickly evolved into event management and increasing Rebel’s brand on and offline.

He loves to teach about the power of online with his knowledge of website building, social media and marketing. He has helped hundreds of small businesses around the world create their online presence and has spoken about online marketing at Oxford University and Henley Business School.

A content creator and film fanatic, when Jack isn’t at Rebel, you’ll probably find him at the cinema, writing reviews at Escape Film Club or figuring out what film he’s going to watch next.

Jack runs his freelance video production company ‘AlingMedia’ as his side hustle. He has produced video work for Microsoft and Alzheimer’s Society and has had his work featured on the BBC, PBS and ABC all before the age of 21. 

Chief Operations Officer

Henry Nicholson

Henry came on board in 2015 managing our events, marketing and communications. Henry’s prime role is now to keep the company running smoothly in all areas, planning our events and ensuring all of our online shenanigans are in order.

Henry is an expert on websites; both in building, developing and troubleshooting them to get them to where they need to be. Check out some of his work at NicholsonWebDesign.

A lover of music, shooting and side-hustle; Henry also owns a business in ethical clothing too, One Planet Apparel and freelances  for Shield Sights

Head of Marketing

Kimberley Taylor

Kimberley is the Head of Marketing at Rebel which means she works with our lovely funding partners, external organisations and our marketing team to get as many local people to know about our courses as possible!

She enjoys talking about the Rebel brand with anyone who’ll listen and loves to hear about all of the businesses that have been created from people attending our courses. Her first project was Rebel Business School Berkshire in February 2022, which had over 170 people attend and over 280 signed up, putting it amongst one of our highest attended local courses.

Kimberley doesn’t sit still, as well as working for Rebel, she runs her own marketing company – Pink Giraffe Marketing. When she’s not working, you’ll find her at a farmers’ market, in the garden, listening to country music, out walking her two very energetic dogs or, browsing cake inspo on Instagram!

Head of Sales

James Headspeath

James leads the sales process selling the Rebel course and methodology across the UK.

James is responsible for developing commercial partnerships for Rebel Business School with local governments, third sector organisations and private sponsors.

He has been following Rebel since its creation and since officially joining the Rebel team in 2017 James has raised over £1m worth of funding helping to deliver events in the communities that need it the most.

Outside of Rebel, James can either be found cheering on Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium or out cycling in the countryside.  

Social Media Manager

Keona Fernandes

Keona helps people know the ins and outs about what happens in Rebel and how we change people’s lives.

Her role as social media managing involves creating content and advertising workshops and events. She manages what goes out on all of our social media platforms!

Her passion within Rebel is making people more aware of how businesses can be created without money and different perspectives around starting businesses through social media.

She has helped build the number of followers on our social media platforms and is enjoying helping Rebel reach a wider audience

Outside of Rebel, she loves travelling, the outdoors, and pushing herself outside her comfort zone. Keona is a big fan of self-development and trying different things. She loves painting, dancing and wants to jump planes!

Her favourite ice cream is sea salt caramel, and she loves beaches and dogs.

She has her own social media agency & her side hustle is bottle art and canvas painting. You can find her on Instagram.

Project manager

Katie Burton-Sweeten

Katie or KBS (she/her) is a Project Manager here at Rebel and joined in summer 2021. She can often be found doing a little bit of everything, but mostly looks after the Rebel team and events, as well as making all those colourful posters you see dotted about your community.

As a former Rebel Business School participant, Katie is extremely passionate about everyone and anyone being able to seize their own means and bring joy to their lives. Katie has been revitalising our hiring process and people systems, and loves creating structures to support this. She also loves a good folder, or 10.

A self-proclaimed creative and autodidact, Katie’s always looking to learn something new, be this from starting a degree in the middle of the pandemic through to being entirely self-taught with the Adobe creative suite. Her favourite programmes are Acrobat Pro & InDesign.

In her spare time however, she’s finally embraced the world of minimalism and enjoys the small details of life, like hanging out with her cats, cooking the best roast potatoes or a walk in woodlands.

Katie likes her coffee black just like her metal.

performance and growth manager

Fabián Cardozo

Fabián joined the Rebel UK team in 2021 as a performance and growth manager where he helps set up the processes required to monitor company progress and goals. Since 2020 he has also set up the Rebel Colombia operation together with a great local team in Colombia. The mission behind both sets of work is to make business accessible to more people around the globe, especially in the Spanish speaking world.

Working with Rebel has been a great experience for him as he has been able to work with a diverse group of wonderful people that enjoy coming up with new ideas together. During this time Rebel Colombia has been running courses all over the country helping people of all backgrounds to get their ideas off the ground, including victims of war, rural communities and young people with sustainable businesses.

He greatly enjoys playing and watching football and just traveling to new places together with his wife. Fabian greatly enjoys learning new things about history and has had a great time discovering the UK since arriving here only some years back.

In addition to Rebel, Fabián is the co-founder of a neuroscience company called WakeSense and you can find more information about the results of the work done at Rebel Colombia here.

Events & Marketing Manager

Emy Bohorquez

Emy works alongside the team to develop relationships with our partners and external stakeholders, after doing our ten day course several times she fell in love with the team and decided to join us in our mission to make business achievable for anyone and everyone.

She loves marketing so she supports Kimberley and the team where she can.

Outside of Rebel, she is a freelance digital marketer for wellness & events companies, weight-lifts 5 to 6 days a week, spends a lot of her time volunteering in her local church in central London and loves all things fitness and wellness. She’s also a dog walker and a pet lover.

Wider Team

Emma May

Accountant – Milward May & Co

Laura Poole

Facilitator & Graphic Design

Euan Pope

Event Success Manager

Naomi Fox-Smith

BID Writer

Ashley Blackmore

Director

Victoria Panasenko

Report Designer

Jenny Mullholland

Grant Fundraiser

Julia Laiko

Digital Ads Manager

Teresa Allen

Copywriter & Admin

Global Team

Tony Henderson Newport - New Zealand

See more about the New Zealand projects here: https://www.rebelbusinessschool.nz