This is an interview with Nicola Lathey, founder and Director of Clinical Services at The Owl Centre – a national ADHD and autism assessment centre
Can you share more about your back story?
I’m a very passionate Speech and Language Therapist. It’s a career that’s always been close to my heart, largely because of my family’s lived experience. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of nine, and my brother has Down’s syndrome and has needed support from a range of therapists throughout his life.
I’ve always lived by the mantra, “Make your story your strength” so I never allowed my dyslexia to define me or hold me back. Instead, it gave me resilience, empathy and a determination to help others overcome barriers to communication and learning as I did.
Why did you start The Owl Centre?
I started The Owl Centre in Oxford in 2011, almost by accident. My then husband’s company had leased a premises that they could no longer afford, so I began offering private speech and language therapy sessions from that space. The service quickly gained momentum, partly because the timing was right, but also because I had built a strong professional network across Oxfordshire and developed a reputation for providing practical, family-centred support.
In 2013, I secured a publishing deal with Macmillan and wrote Small Talk, a parenting guide focused on early language development. Shortly afterwards, I published a series of children’s books that were sold throughout Marks & Spencer stores nationwide. Both opportunities helped raise my profile nationally and introduced The Owl Centre to a wider audience.
The business continued to grow and evolve and in 2018, we secured our first NHS contract to provide autism assessments in Manchester. It was a significant milestone and demonstrated that an independent provider could deliver high-quality, clinically robust services on behalf of the NHS. Since then, we’ve expanded considerably and we now hold around 15 NHS contracts across the country.
What have been the main challenges you’ve faced in scaling the business to a turnover of £9.2 million?
Without a question, growing a business is a constant rollercoaster. In the early days, many of the challenges were operational and financial. As the organisation expanded, the challenges became increasingly about leadership, culture and communication.
Managing people is both the most rewarding and the most difficult part of the role. Every individual communicates differently, is motivated by different things and responds differently to change. Leadership requires you to adapt your style to the person, team or situation in front of you every minute of every day. I have learnt to know my strengths and challenges well though and have found ways to scaffold my weaker areas.
Another significant challenge has been navigating serious personal adversity while leading a growing organisation. My husband and I built the company together, but in 2022 our relationship broke down under circumstances that were deeply painful and he is no longer involved in the company.
Looking back, that period tested my resilience more than anything I had ever faced before, and forced me to separate my personal grief from the responsibility of leading our clinicians and supporting the families who rely on our services. Ultimately, scaling a business is as much a personal growth journey as it is a commercial one.
What does the plan look like for the next five years?
My ambition is for The Owl Centre to continue to be recognised as one of the UK’s leading neurodevelopmental assessment providers. Over the next five years, that means improving access to high-quality assessments, deepening our NHS partnerships and demonstrating the genuine value the independent sector can bring to that relationship.
We want to expand the support available to people before, during and after diagnosis – not just at the point of assessment – while investing in technology and innovation to improve both efficiency and patient experience. Alongside that, we are committed to growing the charitable work of The Owl Centre Charity so we can have greater impact both here and internationally, and to championing neuro-affirmative, evidence-based practice across everything we do.
For me, that last point isn’t just a strategic priority, it’s the foundation everything else is built on. Most importantly, I want us to grow without losing the values and culture that made the organisation successful in the first place.
How do you see your role evolving as the business grows?
In the early days, my ex-husband and I did everything – as you would expect as a founder-led business. Today, my role is much less about doing and much more about leading. As we continue to grow, I expect to spend more time focusing on strategy, innovation, partnerships and culture, rather than day-to-day operations. My role and focus is increasingly to create the conditions for other talented people to succeed.
I still carry out clinical work and care deeply about the clinical delivery of the organisation (and always will), but I have learned that leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about building a team that is capable of finding the answers together. The ultimate goal is to make myself less essential to the daily running of the organisation, whilst remaining deeply connected to its purpose, values and vision. If I can create an organisation that thrives without depending on me, then I will have done my job well.