About Activate Learning:
Our Learning & Development Expertise
Activate Learning exists to help people grow, lead, communicate, collaborate, and perform with confidence.
We believe that learning should be more than content delivery.
It should create movement.
It should shift thinking, build confidence, strengthen behaviour, and help people apply what they learn in real workplace situations.
The Philosophy Behind Our Learning & Development Expertise
Practical
Focused on skills, tools, behaviours, and workplace application.
Human-centred
Designed around how adults learn, engage, reflect, and change.
Flexible
Adaptable to different audiences, industries, levels, and organisational needs.
Relevant
Grounded in real workplace challenges, conversations, and performance expectations.
Movement
Shifting thinking, building confidence, and helping people apply what they learn.
Curious
Always asking questions, exploring new ideas, and helping teams see challenges from fresh angles.
At Activate Learning, our learning experiences are built for real workplace impact.
Each journey is designed to help people engage meaningfully, apply what they learn, and shift behaviour in ways that support individual, team, and organisational performance.
What Makes Us Different
We design with people in mind.
Our learning experiences are built for workplace impact and behaviour change.
We bring together learning design, facilitation, leadership development, coaching, workplace capability, and compliance experience to create solutions that are practical and credible.
Our programmes are not built around generic theory.
They are shaped around real workplace needs, real people challenges, and real performance outcomes.
We bring together learning and development expertise across learning design, facilitation, leadership development, coaching, workplace capability, and compliance to create solutions that are practical, relevant, and credible.
Meet the People Behind Activate Learning
Founded by Charlie O’Connor and led together with Dee Ramgulam, Activate Learning brings together complementary expertise in learning strategy, programme design, facilitation, professional development and coaching.
Together, Charlie and Dee create practical, human-centred experiences that help individuals, teams and leaders build capability, deepen self-awareness and turn learning into meaningful workplace action.
Founder, Director & Learning Solutions Strategist
Learning Strategy | Programme & Curriculum Design | Leadership & Capability Development
Charlene “Charlie” O’Connor
Charlie is the founder and a director of Activate Learning. She is an accomplished learning solutions strategist with more than 28 years of experience in learning and development, human resources and organisational capability development.
She partners with organisations to understand their people, performance priorities and workplace challenges before translating those needs into practical, human-centred learning solutions. Her expertise spans learning strategy, programme and curriculum architecture, instructional design, leadership development, facilitation and blended, digital and microlearning design.
Having designed hundreds of learning solutions and trained more than 15,000 people across Africa, the Middle East and Europe, Charlie combines strategic thinking with practical application to build confidence, strengthen capability and support meaningful workplace performance.
Charlie is passionate about activating human potential.
She believes that learning should shift thinking, inspire action and help people perform with greater clarity, confidence and impact.
Desiree “Dee” Ramgulam
Director & Coaching Lead
COMENSA-Certified Leadership & Life Coach | Professional Development Specialist
Dee is a director and the Coaching Lead at Activate Learning. As a COMENSA-certified coach, she is passionate about helping people gain clarity, recognise their potential and move forward with confidence and purpose.
She brings together experience in SME finance and accounting, operational management, leadership and people development. Having managed operations across multiple manufacturing plants, Dee understands the practical realities of leading teams, managing priorities, delegating responsibility and ensuring consistent follow-through.
Through individual and group coaching, Dee creates a safe, supportive and appropriately challenging space where people can reflect, explore possibilities, take ownership and translate insight into purposeful action.
Dee is passionate about helping people thrive, not simply survive.
Her practical and compassionate coaching approach helps individuals strengthen self-awareness, build confidence and achieve meaningful personal and professional growth.
We design learning that helps people:
Our Promise
Mitigate risks responsibly
Strong workplaces are built when people understand what is expected, recognise risks early, and make responsible decisions in everyday situations.
Our learning journeys help employees apply policies, manage compliance requirements, identify risks, escalate concerns, and act with integrity, accountability, and confidence.
This supports a culture where people do the right thing, protect trust, and contribute to a safer, more ethical, and more responsible workplace.
Work more responsibly
Practical learning journeys that help employees understand what is expected of them, make responsible decisions, apply key policies, recognise and manage risk, and act with accountability in everyday workplace situations.
Our programmes support the behaviours needed to create a workplace where people do the right thing, treat others with respect, protect trust, and contribute to a safe, ethical, compliant, and high-performing environment.
Drive Real Change
Through Action
The real value of learning is seen when people do something differently after the learning experience.
Our journeys are designed to help participants transfer learning into workplace action, whether through improved behaviours, better conversations, stronger decisions, or more effective team practices.
The focus is always on meaningful application that creates visible impact for individuals, teams, and the organisation.
Boost Performance with Practical Tools
Learning should be useful, relevant, and easy to apply.
Our programmes introduce practical tools, frameworks, techniques, and reflection prompts that participants can use immediately in their daily work.
These tools help people plan more effectively, communicate better, manage priorities, lead others, improve collaboration, and take purposeful action that supports performance improvement.
Manage work hurdles
Workplaces are constantly changing, and people need the confidence to respond constructively to pressure, uncertainty, conflict, and competing priorities.
Our learning journeys provide practical guidance for handling difficult conversations, adapting to change, solving problems, and staying grounded in challenging situations.
This helps participants approach workplace demands with greater resilience, confidence, and professionalism.
Intentional leadership
Leadership confidence grows when people understand themselves, communicate with clarity, make thoughtful decisions, and lead others with purpose.
Our leadership and management learning journeys help new, emerging, and existing managers build the practical behaviours needed to lead people, manage performance, delegate effectively, navigate difficult conversations, and create positive team impact.
Master Work Communications
Effective communication is central to workplace success.
Our learning experiences help people express their thoughts with clarity, listen with intention, ask better questions, and adapt their message to different people and situations.
The aim is to build communication confidence that strengthens relationships, reduces misunderstanding, and supports more constructive workplace conversations.
Self-aware leadership
Self-awareness is a foundation for effective leadership. Our learning experiences encourage leaders and emerging leaders to reflect on their strengths, habits, blind spots, values, and impact on others.
By understanding themselves more clearly, participants are better able to lead with emotional intelligence, respond rather than react, and create more positive conditions for others to perform.
Team Synergies
Collaboration improves when people understand how to work with different personalities, perspectives, strengths, and working styles.
Our learning journeys help participants build the behaviours needed for stronger teamwork, including trust, accountability, shared problem-solving, respectful challenge, and active contribution.
This enables teams to work together with greater purpose, alignment, and impact.
Elevate critical-thinking
Our learning journeys help people develop the ability to think with greater structure, focus, and perspective.
Participants are guided to analyse situations more carefully, separate facts from assumptions, identify priorities, and make sense of complex workplace challenges.
This supports stronger judgement, better decision-making, and a more confident approach to problem-solving.