Meet the team behind Cairn & Co.
The Founder
I’m Colin Hamilton, founder of Cairn & Co.
I created Forward in 30 after more than 25 years in senior People & Culture and HR leadership roles across financial services and professional services, working in the UK, Australia and globally.
Much of my career has been spent on the company side of the table. I have advised executive teams and boards, led major transformations, and managed restructures and redundancy programs that shaped who stayed, who exited, and on what terms.
That experience gave me a clear view of how these decisions are really made. I understand what organisations are looking for, what is genuinely negotiable, and why capable people often lose momentum at the very point they need to move forward with confidence.
I am also an IECL-qualified executive coach and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD). That combination gives me both a practical coaching lens and a commercial understanding of leadership, governance and organisational decision-making.
Forward in 30 brings those perspectives together.
It is practical, plain-spoken advice for people facing career change, redundancy, transition or reinvention. The kind of advice I would give you if we were sitting across a desk, focused on what has happened, what matters now, and what you need to do next
Your Coaches
Two coaches take you through the Program.
Sam and Alex are digital avatars and built on decades of real human HR experience.
We do not hide that. It is the whole point.
Forward in 30 is built by humans, for humans. Voiced and scaled by avatars.
Sam
warm, steady, human
Sam takes the moments that need care. The first week, the hard conversations, the days the confidence wobbles.
Calm, never saccharine.
Alex
direct, practical, no fluff
Alex handles the doing.
The CV, the search system, the interview, the offer.
The HR-insider voice that tells you what actually works.
Why avatars, and why we are upfront about it. One person cannot be there for everyone who needs this, at the hour they need it and at a price that does not shut most people out.
Sam and Alex can.
You get the same quality of advice every time, in any timezone.
The knowledge underneath them is human: built by Colin Hamilton with input from a network of senior HR experts across the globe, then scaled so it can actually reach you when you need it
We tell you this plainly because trust matters.
