Directors Development Programme Accelerator

Matt is an expert in marketing strategy and business transformation. He is a senior leader with over 25 years’ experience of improving and growing businesses, gained from a variety of senior management roles. Matt has held MD and Director posts in a FTSE 250 organisation, Marketing and Communications agency and as a business owner. A CIM Marketer by background, Matt has amassed a wealth of commercial transformation and marketing communications experience. He is an accomplished communicator and is skilled at operating at all levels of the organisation, analyzing and quickly establishing business challenges and developing sustainable solutions. He has strong influencing and negotiation skills and can drive transformation change to success with authority and a clear vision. His broad range of experience covers multiple disciplines including marketing, communications and crisis management, commercial development, change management, organisational development, IT & technology deployment, project management and business improvement.

Matt is a director level project and transformation professional with demonstrated ability to create and translate strategy into measured operational performance improvement. He has extensive experience in marketing, customer acquisition, project management, organisational redesign and commercialization, which he has gained across direct and agency environments in Higher and Further Education, Media & Publishing and Local Government sectors. He is an accomplished leader and influencer from the boardroom to front line teams across multiple location.

I have over 20 years of experience working in small and large businesses in HR roles. I started my career in Resourcing before moving into Talent Management, Leadership development and Coaching. I have worked in start - ups, small and large global businesses within a variety of sectors including Retail, Finance, Public Sector, Manufacturing and IT.

Steve’s twenty five year career has spanned a number of sectors including Utilities, IT, Business & Professional Services including ten years as HR Director within Financial Services.

Throughout this time, he has managed several large organisational and cultural change programmes, ensuring the businesses he works with are fit for purpose and have a highly skilled and engaged workforce. Steve’s pragmatic approach to People Leadership has delivered benchmark performance and successfully achieved the Investors in People, Gold Award and being asked to act as one of IIPs Champions. In addition to his roles within Human Resources, Steve has a successful track record as the Customer Operations Director for an insurance business where he successfully demonstrated his leadership through non-HR lenses.

Now working as a full time Executive Coach and Leadership Development specialist, Steve has established himself as a trusted advisor working with Executive teams to develop people strategies and build organisational talent and professional capabilities. His client portfolio comprises national and international businesses across multiple sectors including Manufacturing, Retail, Professional Services, Local Government, Education and Tech firms. Steve also writes for professional journals and is a speaker at events regarding leadership development, employee engagement and change.

Stewart has a career background in corporate banking, and is a highly experienced commercial individual, who commenced a transition into the not for profit sector at the end of 2009. He now has a portfolio of Chair, Board and consultancy roles across not for profits and SMEs.

Throughout his career, Stewart has developed a proven track record in the North West corporate market. In roles covering both relationship management and business development, his key skills of brokering and relationship building ensured the management of multiple stakeholders, at all times undertaken with outstanding levels of integrity. Core to his roles at Bank of Scotland were the management of key entrepreneur relationships for the bank.

In recent years, he has rapidly developed a profile in the not for profit sector, maintaining key board roles across a range of areas, including leisure and social care

Stewart has a range of financial, operational and strategic experience in the private, public and not for profit sectors, including charities, local authorities, banking and venture capital. This has captured a range of areas, including direct roles in leisure, adult care, the arts, environment and recruitment, coupled with a wide range of sectors including manufacturing, service, retail, building products and housebuilding during his corporate banking career. Stewart is at ease in any environment, from start-up to plc boardroom.

Andy is a qualified chartered accountant with in excess of 15 years’ experience working in corporate finance and private equity organisations, where he did multiple Merger and Acquisitions and fund raising transactions and has sat on 15+ Boards.

He made the cross-over in wanting to build his own businesses and in the last 10 years, is a founding partner of a fast-growing and successful e-commerce company, and in 2019, co-founded and launched an education software business around capturing and evidencing health and well being in children. Andy is also a founding partner of the consultancy/operating partners arm of Gunner Cooke Operating Partners.

The vast amount of businesses Andy has appraised and worked with in his corporate finance and private equity career, coupled with his own “at the coalface” learning experiences of starting, building and developing his own businesses, gives an invaluable insight into how businesses and Boards should function.

Andy is incredibly energetic, hungry with a strong desire to succeed in any business he supports.