Kirsty Ritchie
Member Status: Accredited
Member No: NCS17-05124
Location: Edinburgh
Kirsty has a wealth of expertise combining over 25 years of corporate experience in finance, project management, facilitation and lecturing with a professional qualification in psychotherapeutic counselling.
Prior to her qualification as a chartered certified accountant (FCCA) she had already perfected the art of difficult conversations as a certified credit controller (AICM). Kirsty also spent several academic sessions teaching professional accountants, where her love for educating others was firmly established. Her last corporate position was in banking, where she saw through the global financial crisis. She became a subject matter expert in financial and regulatory reporting but also sadly witnessed the aftermath on people’s mental health and careers including her own.
During her time in Financial Services, Kirsty led a large operations team of across 3 locations and as far afield as India. During that time, she successfully centralised the statutory reporting function, delivering over 400 sets of accounts annually. She has led projects including the introduction of IFRS back in 2005, the offshoring of centralised functions and the optimisation of internal processes under regulatory scrutiny. She became keenly interested in finance and risk optimisation, which led to promotion and taking a further leading role in strategic organisational design.
In 2019, Kirsty co-founded Mind & Mission, and with her business partner provides education, and counselling services to a range of business and private clients. The business is expanding rapidly through referrals.
Kirsty selects the most relevant theory, models and latest thinking to engage, inspire and elicit thought provoking conversations around all areas of mental health. Kirsty excels in the design and delivery of training, most recently winning an independent award for the development of a training programme supporting rural Scotland on behalf of The Scottish Government.
She is a published author, with her thought leadership featured in The Scotsman, cityam.com, workplaceinsight.net, CA Magazine, The National Counselling Society and HR Director.
Originally form the Scottish Borders, she now lives in Edinburgh with her husband and sons. In her spare time, Kirsty is learning to play the piano, loves interior design, cooking and gardening.