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 School to help people to create a business and life 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 people get going and make money doing what they enjoy most!
Co-Founder
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
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.
Chief EXECUTIVE 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 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.
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).
Head of Customer Experience & Facilitator
Halima Salim
Halima is a Rebel facilitator and also leads on curating the experience of our Rebels 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.
Lead 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.
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.
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.
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
Laura Poole
Facilitator & Graphic Design
Euan Pope
Data Manager
Fiona Lazar
Business Development
Christine Clacey
Head of Learning
Ashley Blackmore
Director
Victoria Panasenko
Report Designer
Lewis Gray
Admin Support
Herman Ringer
Event Support
Naomi Fox-Smith
BID Writer
Teresa Allen
Copywriter & Admin
Global Team
Tony Henderson Newport - New Zealand
See more about the New Zealand projects here: https://www.rebelbusinessschool.nz
Nathalie Riond - France
See more about the France projects here: https://www.hec.edu/en
Laila Majdoub - Morocco
See more about the Morocco projects here: https://1000fikra.ma/en_US/
Daniel Angel - Colombia
For more information, see here: https://www.therebelschool.co/