About MakedaShe didn't study this territory. She lived it.
Two decades in learning and development. Hundreds of leaders. One consistent truth — the most significant barriers to leadership effectiveness are not external. They're internal.
Makeda Alleyne has spent over two decades in learning and development — designing, managing, and delivering programmes built to create real, lasting change.
That career has taken her from managing executive education at London Business School — working with global organisations including Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, and Carlsberg — to leading operations at Mathematics Mastery, overseeing more than a hundred professional development events annually for thousands of educators across the UK.
Most recently she served as Programme Director at WHEN, where she designed and delivered their signature leadership development programme. In 2019 she founded Makeda Alleyne Programmes Ltd., through which she has coached and trained hundreds of leaders across the UK, US, UAE, and Caribbean.
She knows how organisations work. She knows what leadership development looks like when it's done well and when it falls short. And after two decades of watching capable people struggle with something no programme was designed to address, she built something that does.
100s
of Leaders Coached & Trained
4
Global Regions
4
Years at London Business School
20
Years in L&D
It is this body of work — and the patterns she witnessed repeatedly across every client, every sector, every level of seniority — that became the foundation for Grounded Authority.
But here's what the CV doesn't tell you.
If you had been with her one Tuesday morning in May 2018, you would have found her crouched in the corner of a small meeting room in South London when a psychotherapist told her she was on the verge of a breakdown.
Her reply? "I think I'm already there." And she was. A few days later she was signed off work for five weeks.
"I think I'm already there."
But here's what nobody saw in the years leading up to that moment. The constant second-guessing. Every decision revisited. Every email checked and rechecked. The mask worn every single day, performing the leader she thought she was supposed to be, because she had no idea if the real her was enough.
She called her perfectionism high standards. She called her need for validation being thorough. She called her inability to delegate caring about quality.
She was capable. She knew what good leadership looked like. She had the skills, the knowledge, the track record. What she didn't have was enough of it on the inside. No self-trust. No grounding. Just fear, quietly running every decision, every interaction, every day.
That experience broke her. And then it built her. Because the work she did to find her way back became the foundation for everything she now does with leaders.
What she learned isn't
just for leaders who've hit a wall.
It's for every leader quietly carrying more than they show. That leader is in your organisation right now. Performing competence, they don't fully feel. Second-guessing themselves. Avoiding the conversations that need to happen. Wearing the mask.
Not because they lack skill. Because of what's happening on the inside — the self-doubt and fear that quietly override every framework when the pressure goes up.
That's the problem Grounded Authority was built to solve.
What Makeda BelievesAfter two decades in this work, a few things have become non-negotiable.
That the most significant barriers to leadership effectiveness are not external — they're internal.
01
That capability without self-trust is only half the story.
02
That the work most leadership programmes are too polite to do is precisely the work that changes everything.
03
That the brilliance is already there, in every leader she works with. Her job is not to install it. It's to reveal it.
04
Work With MakedaReady for a real conversation?
Not a sales call. Not a pitch. Just a conversation about where your organisation is, what your leaders are up against, and whether Grounded Authority is the right fit. If it is, brilliant. If it isn't, you'll still leave the call with something useful.
Or email directly: hello@makedaalleyne.com