Career Profile
Dana Mellor LLB (Hons) MAC
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Dana's interest in performance and motivational coaching began with an opportunity to ride racehorses, while still at school. With a father who was a dedicated top professional jockey, Dana was intrigued from an early age, by the dynamics between people and the equine athlete. While studying law at Lancaster University, Dana trained for three years with a top stable in Lancashire. Standing under 5' in height and weighing less than 7stone, she mastered how to communicate with hundreds of different thoroughbred racehorses, not only to control their behaviour but also to achieve the best possible performance from each horse, at any given time.
By the time she graduated, Dana was ready to take on the challenge and commitments of a professional sports career when she was offered a position as a full time apprentice jockey. |
As a female law graduate, embarking on a career as a jockey, Dana soon caught the attention of the media, creating headlines such as 'Diminutive Dana strikes again' and 'Dana, a law unto herself' as she 'flew the flag for the girls' in a male dominated competitive sport. The transition which followed, pushed Dana through the challenges of physical, emotional, psychological and cultural change. 'Being a full time student, and training part time was one thing, being a full time sports professional, was quite another' says Dana.
Tens of thousands of miles and six years later, with fifty memorable and hard-fought winners against top professionals to her name, Dana had ridden at every racetrack in England, Scotland and Wales, had represented her country in France and Japan and had travelled all around the world.
Dana soon applied her first hand experience in a new capacity and with a raised self-awareness she used a variety of self-coaching techniques to create her perfect job. By playing an instrumental role, in establishing and managing a new racing industry initiative (The Jockeys Employment & Training Scheme) Dana worked with over 100 professional jockeys facing critical career change decisions, enabling them to secure long-term career prospects for themselves. As the industry's only designated Career Coach, Dana was part of a small, dynamic team, working with businesses and jockeys nationwide, helping others to succeed.
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With over 600 certified coaching hours and a coaching qualification from the University of Bath, Dana is a member of the Association for Coaching (MAC). Some of her clients are using maternity leave to invest in their own career development, while others are successfully overcoming the challenges of returning to work after maternity leave.
Having supported others through career and work challenges in the past, Dana offers a unique blend of coaching techniques and experience, to do so again. |
As well as a law graduate, Dana is an NLP Business Practitioner and has a Certificate in Coaching & Business Studies (University of Bath). Dana uses concepts from Transactional Analysis, MBTI, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Visualisation, Clean Language and Metaphors, among others.
Dana is a member of the Association for Coaching.
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