Member Spotlight: Litsa Smith, Founder, Work With Litsa

Introduce yourself

I’m Litsa Smith, founder of Work With Litsa. My background is over 20 years of operational leadership at L’Oréal, THG, Warner Bros and Tesco, and I’m an IoL Accredited Leadership Coach and DiSC practitioner.

That experience now feeds into two sides of my work:

• mentoring and coaching successful service-based business owners who are ready for a step change- scaling up, changing how they work, or shifting their business model,
• and delivering leadership coaching and DiSC workshops for corporate teams and leaders.

I’m based in Altrincham.

Career highlight

I’ll give you two, because I couldn’t choose.

On the fun side, working at Warner Bros meant getting to attend multiple film premieres, including a Harry Potter one – the details of which film it was i cant remember, but the red carpet I definitely can!

On the working side, it was leading the operations side of integrating LookFantastic into THG after the acquisition, and later doing something similar with Myprotein. Managing both the business integration and the stakeholder side of that was one of the most interesting periods of my career- mentally stretching, completely new territory, and a huge amount to learn in a short space of time.

Name three words that describe your personality

Focused, practical, fun.

What’s the best thing about pro-manchester?

Meeting new people, though the talks and there’s always something new to learn.. and I love getting a proper nosey around the different offices and locations they’re held in.

What are your priorities for 2026?

For 2026 I want to work with more fast-moving teams and businesses I haven’t worked with before, coaching leaders and teams to be more effective while feeling great about their work. Alongside that, I’m continuing to support established business owners through my signature programme, By Design, with a new cohort launching in September

What do you think are the most important things going on in Manchester at the moment?

Manchester’s becoming a serious alternative to London for growing businesses- the new Sister innovation district alone is expected to bring over 10,000 jobs and £1.5 billion a year into the local economy.

What interests me is what that growth means for leadership. As more businesses scale up or relocate here, the ones getting it right are investing in how their people and leaders work together just as fast as they’re investing in headcount and office space.

Favourite meeting place in Manchester

JUNCTION, MCR — near St Peter’s Square. Love it here and Sophie and her team will always look after you!

Are there any particular types of businesses that you would like to meet?

On the corporate side, I’d love to connect with HR and L&D leads, and Ops or People Directors who are thinking about team development and DiSC.

Service-based founders three to ten years into their business who’ve built something that works and want to take it further- agencies, tutors, social media managers, accountancy firms, interior designers, consultants and creative studios are typical.

Get In Touch

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 07726014669

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/litsa-smith