Directors Development Programme Accelerator

David’s experience stems from 33 years in the British Army where he reached a senior level. He led and managed soldiers throughout his career and was particularly involved in the interface between operational and strategic decision making. He has also been responsible for a number of change programmes and has been a Deputy Chief of Staff to a number of large organisations over that time. 

He has held several Board positions and is currently a Non Executive Director for Believe Housing as well as a trustee for his regimental charity. He has enjoyed the overlap between the public and private sectors and is a keen advocate on through life professional development. He is a member of the Institute of Directors and currently holds their Certificate and Diploma in Company Direction.  

He has coached several individuals over the years and is a qualified executive coach with a Post Graduate Certificate from the Henley Business School. In addition he is a keen advocate for mentoring and has mentored for 2 years on the National 30% club which aims to get greater representation on boards by women. 

He became a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and gained Chartered Manager status in 2020 and amongst other formal qualifications also holds a MBA and MSc in National Security Strategy.  

He is passionate about helping others and would cite Integrity and Respect for others as core values. 

Jed is a business growth expert, experienced in working with board level decision makers to define and implement key business strategies and so drive shareholder value. His main areas of expertise include strategic and business planning, strategic marketing and business performance improvement. 

After completing his MBA, he worked as strategic marketing manager within a national professional services firm. He then worked as a strategic marketing consultant for a B2B market research business that involved working across the UK, Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific for a range of multi-national and UK based corporations. For the last 14 years, he has been working with high growth SMEs as they strive to achieve their true potential. 

In support of his consulting and coaching work, Jed regularly designs and delivers practical workshops aimed at helping business leaders and managers learn and implement new skills and techniques as well as challenge existing ways of doing business.  

He holds a BA (Econ) Hons in Economics and Econometrics and MBA from the University of Manchester and a Diploma in Company Director from the Institute of Directors. He is also an Emergenetics ® certified associate. 

James has extensive experience in commercial and operational roles as a leader within high-growth SME 
environments.

Initially working within executive recruitment within the construction industry, he has also consulted 
with all sizes of organisations across multiple sectors. James brings a pragmatic, thought-provoking and 
experience-led perspective to address the challenges faced by leaders today. 

He supports leaders to distribute decision making and deploy coaching practice in order to achieve 
sustainable growth and empower the organisation throughout.

Alex is an experienced and dedicated education consultant and trainer. His core skillset is the design and delivery of engaging personal and professional development programmes. He is adaptable and comfortable working at any level in the organisation, from front line leaders to the Board.

Prior to working in consultancy Alex was an army officer (making it to Major). A natural diplomat, Alex studied Pashto (the language of Southern Afghanistan) and held a leadership role in supporting reconstruction and development, primarily in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  Alex supported the development and delivery of the army’s global Security, Leadership and Strategy programme, and later worked to establish the curriculum for Afghanistan’s Officer Training Academy, in Kabul.

Alex has built a consultancy business and delivered a diverse portfolio of organisational development projects. He works across all sectors and his clients include the NHS, NATO, Barnardo’s, Home Bargains, a variety of Academy Trusts and schools, and many smaller businesses and charities. Alex has worked closely with the Chartered Management Institute, and routinely lectures on MBA and Director Development programmes for the Universities of York, Chester, and East London. Alex maintains a high level of currency and is currently developing programmes focussing on Distributed Leadership, and Managing Neurodivergent Colleagues.

Alex holds three Master’s degrees: Educational Innovation, Psychology, and Occupational Psychology. He is married to Katherine and has two children and two Labradors.

Mel is passionate about helping private, public and third sector organisations humanise transformation. Humanising transformation leads to accelerated success and a safer, happier, and evolving human systems and earth. Pioneering the concept of Humanising Transformation as a standard within all change and transformation  

Mel believes that leaders hold to human centred transformation in the first instance and the mindset, behaviours and competencies required to humanise transformation are specific. This is where the centre of Mel's work and mission focus – on supporting leaders, practitioners at the centre of change and organisational systems adopt the mindset that supports humanity centred practices to foster healthy evolving systems.  

The journey to this professional mission has been supported through Mel's own practice in the world of change and transformation, and Mel's role as an entrepreneur, executive leader, and mentor-coach. The theme running through Mel's experience of success is how people focus and prioritise our personal and professional development to better support others. 

Shaun Hughes is Associate Tutor for InPD, specialising in Leadership, Management, Projects and Processes, Coaching and Mentoring, Strategy, Vision, Change and Culture.  

Shaun is a qualified change management practitioner and specialises in leadership development.  He is also a highly experienced consultant and executive coach, routinely teaching on MBA programmes for the University of Chester, and mentors a number of senior executives across the public and private sectors. 

For 16 years, Shaun was an aircrew officer in the RAF as an Operational Commander and post graduate specialist instructor.  He led and was responsible for the training and standards of the RAF’s largest frontline operational community; the Procurement lead for the largest fleet upgrade in RAF history and was an in theatre operational commander during the Bosnia conflict. 

During his decade with BAE Systems as a Project Director he led a range of transformation programmes across the Eurofighter/Typhoon Programme delivering innovate methodologies to maximise the Customer (RAF) experience and engagement. Applying the same principles to the through life support of the aircraft delivering a £500M lead contract for BAE Systems leading a 500 strong joint BAES/MoD multifunctional team.  Which in turn delivered an £18Bn line of business and £2Bn of through life savings 

Shaun has 40 years’ experience across the Military, Defence, Aerospace and engineering SMEs.  He has recently spent 15 years delivering transformational change, applying organisation design, operating model change, problem-solving and lean with a leadership focus. Taking an end-to-end view of the enterprise, whether in the large corporate domain or a more discrete SME businesses. With key experience in product development, programme management, operations management, quality, organisational transformation and turnaround of large projects and SMEs. 

Janet is a leadership, resilience and business coach. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young she worked in senior management and finance director roles for recognised retailers such as WH Smiths and Littlewoods. She then followed her passion for developing people by becoming a leadership development trainer, currently specialising in wellbeing and resilience with a wide range of companies including BAE Systems, Pets at Home, Janssen Pharmaceutical, SME’s and Charities. She also delivers a wide range of finance programmes from introductory sessions up to Directors Development, together with individual finance business coaching.

Janet enjoys using her finance, business and personal leadership experience, combined with her coaching and training skills, to enable people and teams develop the skills, behaviours and culture they desire.

Janet works with not-for-profit organisations, currently as a Governor for the Trafford College Group, a Trustee & Treasurer for Home-Start Trafford, Salford & Wigan plus a business mentor with the Manchester Business Growth Hub.

Janet is an accredited practitioner for the Kirros RQi resilience programme plus trained in the Drake P3 behavioural profiling system. She is a member of the Association of Coaching (AOC), the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW).

Ewan combines training with running an active accounting practice and working as a Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at a UK University. 

Ewan has 14 years of training experience and 22 years of experience as an accounting and finance professional.  His main areas of expertise are financial reporting, financial strategy, finance for non-financial managers and governance.  Prior to training Ewan held a variety of industry roles from site accountant for an American multi-national to owner/finance director of a logistics company, but his real passion is in training and teaching. 

Ewan holds a Bachelors degree in Accounting and Marketing, diplomas from both Harvard and Yale, and alongside his MBA he is in the final year of a Doctorate of Business Administration. He has conducted training in the UK, Ghana, Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, China and Hong Kong. 

Professionally he is a qualified Chartered Accountant and holds public practice credentials as both a financial accountant and tax advisor, he is a fellow of the Higher Education and the Chartered Management Institute.  He has previously served as a member of the British Accounting and Finance Association executive committee for higher education and training.  

Della has been a chartered accountant for over 30 years, founder of three businesses, mother of two teens, and author of three books. As well as running her own businesses Della has served as Finance Director of multinational organisations liaising with non-financial managers to improve the overall business. She was voted one of Accountancy Age’s ‘Top Women in Finance’ and one of Tide Bank’s ‘20 entrepreneurs to watch in 2020’.  

Della’s passion is to demystify the world of accounts and to coach directors and owners to build the business that they first dreamed of with the results that they deserve. 

Tara Askham is a qualified lecturer specialising in finance and a Fellow of the Association of Accounting Technicians. As a Finance Director, Tara co-founded multi-award-winning social enterprise Infused Learning and wrote the first Accountancy Access to Higher Education Diploma in the country. She designs and delivers finance courses to companies around the UK including Volkswagen. She inspects colleges’ accounting provisions on behalf of the Association of Accounting Technicians and works as a consultant subject matter expert for global accountancy awarding bodies writing and moderating exam material. She wrote the global award-winning ACCA-X finance course and is a published author for Osborne Books. Her experience has led to her role with NatWest as a Social and Community Capital credit panel member. (Part of the independent credit panel to analytically review each charitable proposal for funding). Tara is also a guest Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.   

Christine Silvester  is a qualified chartered accountant, (ICAEW)  who runs her own accountancy practice in Warwickshire where she specialises in the provision of accounting and tax compliance services to a range of small businesses. She also provides tutoring, support and guidance to business owners in the understanding and requirements of finance.  

After  qualifying as an accountant  with Coopers & Lybrand in Birmingham Christine briefly worked in financial recruitment before moving to work for BT.  During 12 years at BT  she worked in various  senior financial management  roles including Head of Business Planning and Forecasting for one of the divisions in the company which required working with operational teams across the business.   

Christine has over 37 years working  in Finance and has gained a wealth of experience which ranges from working with large teams and budgets in excess of £1bn to supporting start up businesses including building and running her own successful business for almost 20 years.  Christine enjoys sharing these experiences through her various tutoring roles. 

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 wellbeing 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, and has a strong desire to succeed in any business he supports.

Rian is a content marketing specialist with a passion for all things marketing, behaviour change, and empowerment through education.

He has a diverse background in marketing, having worked both in-house and agency-side with clients in various sectors like retail, construction, healthcare, education, and property over the last 10+ years.

Most notably, Rian has delivered successful strategic activity for clients such as Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Freeport, Peel: Wirral Waters, and Transport for the North to name a few.

Rian is a successful business leader and networker, having set up Liverpool-based content marketing agency A&B Marketing in 2020. Rian now leads a small team to deliver engaging marketing campaigns that are focused on collaborative, ROI-

Having delivered training to hundreds of delegates, Rian utilises his unique approach to marketing and education to guide delegates through each stage of the learning process at a pace that is comfortable and engaging.

Bill is a guest speaker at leading global business schools including Sheffield (UK), EDHEC (FR) IMD (CH), Queensland University (AUS), Oxford Brookes (UK), Rotterdam School of Management (NL) MIT (USA), London Business School (UK) to mention a few.  

He has delivered Tedx Talk on Disrupting Disruption at EDHEC Business School in Lille March 2018 and three Henry Stewart Talks: Disruption & How to Change, The Director as a Technology Advocate: Why? & How to structure a Presentation 

He is a keynote speaker and he was asked by Fiat Chrysler Automotive to headline their annual conference on Disruption and Cambiamento (Change) delivered in Italian and English. 

Bill spent his corporate career in the international communications industry Bates Dorlands, DMB&B & CIA advertising companies where he was lucky enough to live and work in London, Paris, Sydney and New York working with clients including BT, Campbell’s, Mars, Alfa Romeo, then worked was the Marketing Director UK and Europe for GE Insurance Holdings. 

He is the co-author of the international best seller Pitch Yourself 2nd edition published by Pearson. Demonstrating apply marketing principles to the recruitment process). Pitch Yourself is published in 67 countries and has been translated in numerous languages including the big four: English, Spanish, French and Chinese.  

Martin has worked in the marketing industry for 33 years. As both Marketing Director and Managing Director, he has worked with companies and clients at every level to develop implement marketing strategies and create tactical campaigns across companies as diverse as Lloyds TSB, Mercedes, Scania and Harper Collins. 

Over the last 12 years he has worked with companies throughout a wide range of industry sectors, from start-up entrepreneurs, to larger, well established brands. He delivers training, coaching, and consultancy on every element of marketing, and has trained hundreds of companies in how to develop their marketing from top level strategy to day to day skills and tactical implementation. 

He is a combination of strategist, planner, and tactical marketeer with a wealth of real experience working as, and with, marketing directors, owner-drivers, CEOs and teams. 

Jenny is an experienced marketing professional, with over 20 year’s expertise in developing and implementing successful marketing strategies that deliver sales and brand value.  

She has extensive experience at both strategic and tactical level, having worked as Head of Marketing for companies in the property and interiors sector, as well as successfully managing in-house marketing and creative teams to target B2B and B2C markets nationally and internationally. 

She is skilled at all areas of marketing communications including digital and content marketing, social media marketing, brand strategy, public relations, advertising, sales promotion, email marketing and event management. 

Jenny has worked with many different sizes of company from start-ups to large corporates in the private and public sector, on both the client and agency side and is a skilled communicator who takes a practical, creative, collaborative approach to helping everyone she works with and trains, get the best results for themselves and their teams.  

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.