Inform & frame
We start by asking whether you need more data or better analysis, then frame the problem so that rational and creative thinking can work together. Decision-makers act on evidence and on the engagement of everyone involved.
Bringing strategy to life in real time · London · Since 1989
How do you get very different people to think together – and act faster?
Beechwood International has been answering that question since 1989: for pharmaceutical companies, banks and manufacturers; for governments, the military and aid agencies; and now for organisations working out what AI changes.
Connecting the dots · Beechwood workshop series
Collaborative thinking. Collective action.OperationalDigitalGeopoliticalCounter-financial crimeHuman rightsAI
What we’re about
Integrative thinking via collaboration.
The biggest problems sit at the intersections – between functions, regions and levels inside an organisation, and between organisations that do not normally speak the same language. Beechwood brings the right people into one room, frames the problem so everyone can see it whole, and guides the conversation to decisions that stick.
Engage & align
Ownership is the underlying principle. We never impose a solution; we liberate the best ideas from within and align the people who then have to implement – in workshops, because face-to-face collaboration is what deals with the human factors that sink most projects.
Convene & act
Kick-offs, pit-stops and close-outs for projects; strategy workshops and conferences of up to a thousand delegates; specialist training modules. Every event follows a planned logic flow that ends in a clear, step-by-step action plan.
The record
Hundreds of assignments – New York to Afghanistan, London to Somalia, Canberra to Syria.
1989
Strategy workshops for business
Founded in London. The TEAMWIN mobilisation method used to launch and sustain strategic initiatives, mergers and clinical-trial start-ups for pharma, banks, manufacturers, outsourcers and hoteliers – doubling throughput here, tripling a business there.
2009
Governments, defence and aid
The same approach applied where the stakes are highest: Wilton Park conferences for NATO, futures work for the UK MoD, the Afghan Ministry of Interior, UN humanitarian dilemmas in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the UN’s first Cash Coordinator in the Philippines.
2013
Safer corridors
When banks began closing accounts for money-service businesses, we assessed the Somalia–UK corridor for HM Government, then the humanitarian use of hawala in Syria for the United Nations – and designed tools to keep finance safe without shutting out the vulnerable.
2013
Counter-financial-crime training
We became an external trainer on the National Crime Agency’s Expert Laundering Evidence course and designed terrorism-finance workshops for other government agencies, banks and their corporate customers – the start of an accredited training practice that continues today.
Now
Spin-offs, and AI
The safer-corridors work became a company of its own – Amanacard – tracking funds from source to end recipient in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Ukraine. Beechwood now brings the same integrative thinking to what AI changes for decision-makers.
What we do now
Three ways to work with us.
How well are you connecting the dots?
Counter-financial-crime training & expert evidence
Specialised modules on informal value transfer – hawala and hundi, trade-based finance, cash economies – and on how evidence about them stands up in court. Delivered since 2013 on the National Crime Agency’s Expert Laundering Evidence course for expert witnesses across the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group, with a live cross-examination exercise led by practising King’s Counsel. Available to banks, regulators, prosecutors and law enforcement.
How do you keep finance safe without shutting out the vulnerable?
Safer corridors
Rapid technical assessments of how money actually moves into sanctioned, de-risked or conflict-affected markets, and practical risk tools for the agencies and banks that must operate there. The operating solution that grew out of this work is now delivered by our spin-off, Amanacard.
How do you translate analysis into action?
Integrative-thinking workshops – including AI
Kick-off and pit-stop workshops for projects and strategic initiatives; resilience-building modules for specialist units; and a new strand for leadership teams deciding what AI should and should not change in how they work – what to automate, whom to listen to, and how to keep judgement in the loop.
Coordinator of experts
Dr Edwina Thompson
Beechwood’s Director assembles the right experts for each assignment and holds the whole together – framing the problem, running the room, and making sure the output survives contact with reality.
A leading authority on financial flows in high-risk environments, she has advised governments, the UN, NATO, the World Bank, banks, charities and law-enforcement agencies for more than two decades. Her doctoral fieldwork across all thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan became Trust is the Coin of the Realm (Oxford University Press, 2011; second edition 2026). Her career began in refugee protection at Amnesty International and the Red Cross, and as a reserve officer in the Royal Navy.
- PhDLaw (RegNet), Australian National University; Visiting Doctoral Fellow, St Cross College, Oxford
- NCA ELEExternal trainer on the Expert Laundering Evidence course since 2013
- BriefingsUK Joint Intelligence Committee chair, US Treasury, USAID, FCDO; UK delegation to the Counter-Daesh Finance Group; Chatham House Illicit Finance conference since its first year
The roster
No fixed team – the right people for the problem.
Every assignment draws on a standing roster of practitioners who are recognised in their own fields and prefer to facilitate rather than dictate. They are engaged per assignment, so clients pay for expertise, not overhead.
- King’s Counsel and criminal barristers
- Former law-enforcement and intelligence officers
- Bank compliance and financial-crime heads
- Military planners and red-teamers
- Humanitarian and development practitioners
- Technologists and data specialists
- Clinical-research and pharma operators
- Facilitators trained in the TEAMWIN method
Selected work
Making the complicated simple.
2010s–Brokering the MSF drug-combination trial for multi-drug-resistant TBFeatured · Pharma
Médecins Sans Frontières wanted to run a single clinical trial combining new drugs owned by two different pharmaceutical companies – something neither company had reason to agree to. Beechwood played a key role in brokering it and making it happen. In a three-month engagement we assembled a team of commercial and clinical-research, negotiation, licensing, public–private-partnership, humanitarian decision-making and strategic-communications experts; aligned MSF internally and built a common understanding among its medical experts; reviewed the draft protocol synopses; and agreed and rehearsed the negotiation strategy with the two companies. The combined trial went ahead – and the drug combination it tested is now actually solving multi-drug-resistant TB.
1990s–Kick-offs for global clinical trialsPharma
The start-up is the most difficult stage of a clinical trial, marked by costly delays. A market leader in outsourcing clinical trials used Beechwood for over twenty years as a ‘Trojan horse’ to transform project kick-offs across eight therapeutic areas – 27 international workshops for 16 global pharmaceutical companies in one programme alone – helping project managers gain rapid traction and sustain momentum, and giving the business a differentiator in a highly competitive market.
1990s–Growth, mergers and supply chainsBusiness
Strategy workshops that doubled sales and profit at a complacent market leader in three years; tripled an outsourcer from domestic to global; accelerated post-merger integration between European and US professional-services firms and between arch-competitor pharma companies; and built a single supply chain from six merged family-owned wholesalers. Conferences of up to a thousand hotel managers turned into 5,000 categorised customer-retention ideas.
2010Closing the security governance gapGovernment
A strategic initiative with the Afghan Ministry of Interior to link national policing strategy with policing on the ground, ahead of the 2014 drawdown. Workshops in Kabul and at Wilton Park with the Ministry’s highest-ranking officers and provincial commanders produced a shared vision, measurable milestones and a pilot Strategic Management Framework in two provinces.
2010–15Future defence capabilityDefence
Design, delivery and reporting of the Whither Warfare conferences funded by the General Dynamics Research Foundation, attended by the UK’s most senior defence personnel; a conference ‘with a difference’ for NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe on civil-military interaction; Mission Exploitation Symposia for troops returning from Afghanistan; futures workshops for a Dstl study on shared situational awareness; red-teaming and wargames for UK and US defence.
2013–14Cash coordination after Typhoon HaiyanHumanitarian
Deployed to the Philippines as the UN’s first Cash Coordinator at OCHA, Dr Thompson used TEAMWIN tools to accelerate mutual understanding between very different technical communities under extreme pressure, and supported the main telco providers and responders in using mobile money for cash payments. One of those companies went on to win the 2014 GSMA award for Best Use of Mobile in Emergency or Humanitarian Situations.
2013–15Safer corridors: Somalia and SyriaSafer corridors
Triggered by UK and US banks terminating services for money-service businesses, the Somalia–UK rapid assessment for HM Government collected the evidence and proposed policy solutions, presented at Oxford, USAID and the US Institute of Peace, and led to a London Action Group on cross-border remittances and the launch of the Somali Money Services Association. In 2015 the team assessed informal money transfers to Syria for the United Nations and built a risk-matrix tool for agencies channelling cash into the conflict.
2013–Countering terrorism financeExpert evidence
Strategic and tactical support to Western governments – bilaterally and through NATO, the UN and the World Bank – on understanding and interdicting terrorist financial flows, built on interviews with hundreds of hawala operators and trading networks across the Middle East and Horn of Africa. Since 2013, training for expert witnesses on the National Crime Agency’s Expert Laundering Evidence course, and terrorism-finance workshops for banks and their corporate customers.
2010–14Humanitarian dilemmas in real timeHumanitarian
Over 200 humanitarians in Pakistan worked through live dilemmas at the request of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator; an inter-agency workshop in Colombo applied lessons from Sri Lanka’s 2008–9 response; a two-day programme equipped Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs to lead responses to the Syrian refugee crisis; and 180 British Army majors spent half a day seeing Afghanistan through humanitarian eyes using the TEAMWIN Decision-Navigator.
“In a short time we have doubled our throughput and increased productivity substantially. Beechwood continues to provide us with a structured approach to the crucial communications and implementation process.”
CEO, manufacturer“As a direct result of Beechwood, we now have a far better understanding of how best to develop our land capability and I am pleased to see the critical links between Industry and Army beginning to form.”
Director of Force Development, British Army“I have never seen a meeting run like this in my 15 years of working in the aid sector; the way deep thinking and action were combined in a matter of hours, and collaboration forged … well done!”
Humanitarian response lead“We were able to run with the recommendations – formed by our own teams and reported so quickly following the workshops – without delay, and already they are changing the way we work in fragile states.”
Government client
Contact
Ready to dig in?
If you would like to explore how our experience and collaborative approach could help with a strategic initiative, a training need or an expert-evidence question, send us a note and we will come back to you.
Beechwood International Ltd · 77 East Road, London N1 6AH, United Kingdom · Registered in England No. 02452988