About Us

Birmingham Central Library View from the Hill consulting

Our Story

Founded by Nicola Hewitt, View From The Hill is a boutique consultancy dedicated to helping businesses and organisations thrive, fostering vibrant communities, towns and cities.
With over 25 years of experience in both the private and public sector, we recognised the interdependencies between strong business clusters, investment, culture, tourism, and placemaking.

Our Approach

At View From The Hill we immerse ourselves in understanding your organisational challenges, competitive landscape, and key objectives. We believe in laying a solidfoundation at the project’s outset by clearly defining constraints, stakeholder dynamics, market conditions and team dynamics. This approach ensures efficient and successful project delivery.

Our Ethos

Collaboration is at the heart of our work. We engage closely with our clients, sharing insights and gathering feedback to ensure our final recommendations are actionable,
financially viable and aligned with your long-term strategy.

Expert Advice

Leveraging our extensive networks and deep experience in the private sector, cultural, tourism, leisure and local government spheres, we provide expert business consultancy to help you achieve your goals.

Our Associates

Our team includes a diverse range of Associates, each offering different areas of expertise across different sectors, ensuring we bring the right skill sets to meet your business needs.

How can we help

Contact us confidentially to discuss how we can support your growth and development: info@vfthconsulting.co.uk

Nicola Hewitt, Business Consultant, Mentor

Nicola is the founder of View From The Hill. She brings extensive experience from consultancy and client-side roles, delivering results within dynamic, complex environments. Her expertise spans place-based strategy, tourism and culture as well as strategic planning, business development, commercialisation and business support.

With over 20 years in the private sector, Nicola has helped firms to develop sustainable business models, working with charity, not for profit, B2B and B2C companies and has specialist expertise and experience in working with organisations owned by the public sector.

She is also an accredited mentor for The Portfolio Collective, collaborating with small business owners to define their goals, build effective teams and operated successfully in competive markets.

Contact Nicola
Nicola Hewitt The View From The Hill Consultancy Director and Onwer

Associates

We work with a diverse range of inclusive, highly qualified and talented consultants. Our network enables us to increase our capacity and resources as needed to ensure we deploy the most appropriate team for your brief.

Nick Cave

Management Consultant
Nick is a seasoned strategic leader with extensive expertise spanning District, County, Unitary, Local, and Central Government, along with the broader public sector. He excels
in transformation and partnership working, boasting considerable experience in managing intricate business cases for change and transformation, encompassing leisure, traded, and customer services.

Nick is a proven leader in driving major change programs and organisational recovery, delivering substantial benefits across Local Government services. His areas of impact include Finance, HR, ICT, Property, and customer-centric, front-line service transformation, showcasing his commitment to enhancing public service delivery.

Lara Ratnaraja, Cultural Consultant

Lara Ratnaraja, 

Cultural Consultant

Lara is a Cultural Consultant specialising in culture, diversity, innovation, leadership, collaboration, cultural policy and placemaking. She has worked within the cultural, HE,
and digital sectors.

She co-produces cultural leadership programs for people from diverse backgrounds linked to geographical places. Lara has developed, managed, and delivered successful
ERDF, ESF, ACE, and AHRC bids and programs in the public, HE, and commercial sectors.

Lara is on the UK Council for Creative UK, the National Trust Midlands Regional Council, and the Equality Monitoring Group for Arts Council Wales. She also serves on the Board
of Compton Verney and co-chairs Coventry Biennial.

Jane Hemingway (FInstLM) Executive, Leadership and Change Coach

Jane Hemingway (FInstLM)

Executive, Leadership and Change Coach

Jane is an experienced coach in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. With six years in management consultancy, she specialises in public sector/local government change and transformation.
Jane equips consultants and interims with skills and confidence for major
transformation programs. She offers coaching, mentoring, and training tailored to client needs, blending approaches as required.

Jane is an accredited Time to Think® facilitator, NLP qualified, Savvy Conversations® 
practitioner, and an Emotional Culture® Silver Elephant Rider. Accredited by The Coaching Academy and a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management, she’s also a member of the International Coach Federation.