Who We Are

For the past 10 years, Communication Essentials has been showing clients how to get what they want by changing the way they think, talk and act. Based in Northern California's Bay Area and London, UK, we serve clients throughout the world.

Every member of our 12 person team unfailingly walks their talk. Each of our coaches has a double-edged background: a solid track record within the mainstream business world combined with a multi-disciplinary study of human communication. Each is still actively engaged in that process. For this reason, the solutions they recommend are rooted in reality, highly practical, and produce results - fast. Brief bios of the CommunicationEssentials core team - Caitlin Miller, Arthur Joseph, Mike Griffiths and Kris Surroy - follow below.

Caitlin Miller is the founder of CommunicationEssentials. For the past 13 years, Caitlin has devoted her life to helping individuals, teams and companies to produce breakthroughs in their performance by examining the way they communicate not just with each other, but also with themselves. Some of Caitlin's better-known corporate clients include Adobe, Brocade Communications, Cable & Wireless, Hewlett Packard Raytheon Professional Services, and General Motors.

Caitlin spent the first part of her career in the '80s working with two private banking giants (Citibank NA Private Bank, London and Merrill Lynch International Bank, London). Caitlin holds a joint honors degree in Economics and Politics from the University of York, UK. Caitlin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000 and manages the US operation.

Arthur Joseph, MA has spent the past 40 years studying the physical, emotional and psychological aspects of the human voice. Many thousands of people from all walks of life have used ArthurÕs 'Vocal Awareness' principles to great effect. Pierce Brosnan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Robbins, Sean Connery and Angelina Jolie are just a handful of people on the celebrity circuit who have personally benefited from his work.

Arthur lists among his corporate clients household names such as Ariba, Avery Dennison, Fox Sports, Hallmark Channel, VH-1 Network, Walt Disney Imagineering, Toyota, Ritz Carlton Hotel Co, Prudential Securities, Lexus, the Federal Reserve Bank and Covey Leadership Training.

Arthur has authored three books, two audio series and one Vocal Awareness video. He holds an MA in Music, is a former USC professor, visiting artist at Yale and George Washington Universities, and founder of the Vocal Awareness Institute. Arthur currently resides in LA and teaches clients worldwide.

Mike Griffiths started his consulting career with Andersen Consulting (Strategic Services Division), then moved on to work with The Centre for Strategy Implementation, working with clients such as Time Warner, Autoglass International and Hewlett Packard.

Mike spent a number of years with JMW Consultants Ltd, a US-based strategy implementation consulting firm. During his time at JMW he was accountable for managing projects throughout BP and all its major supplier partners, Polygram (now Universal) and IBM. Other clients include American Express, BASF, British Telecom, EDS, Nokia, Time Warner and W H Smith. He has also worked with a number of consulting firms teaching them the skills that he himself uses to coach clients.

Mike holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from London University and an MBA from Henley Management College. Prior to joining the business world, he played the violin professionally with the London Symphony Orchestra. (He also has teaching qualifications from the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music.) Mike is currently based in London, UK and manages the UK operation.

Kris Surroy Kris Surroy has 11 years' experience in the fields of Organization Development, Program Management, Leadership Development and Change Facilitation. He has worked in both line management and management consulting capacities with some of the largest companies on the planet and also with a number of social entrepreneurs whose ventures are driven by vision and social values.

As a principal consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, he has delivered projects across a range of sectors including public, automotive, telecoms, hi-tech, retail and financial services. His clients include Cadence Design Systems,Gap, Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, Tesco and McKinsey & Co. Kris manages projects within the UK, mainland Europe, Russia, the US, and Asia Pacific.