CV

A professional strategic manager with 17 years experience in the voluntary sector. Latterly, leading a small national charity for deaf children through the adoption of professional standards in finance, fundraising, HR and service delivery. Significant research background based around user centred projects in information and knowledge technologies. Strong, empathetic leader with proven track record of managing team of 25 specialists and a natural communicator in both oral and written media. Committed to achieving quality objectives through clear vision, systematic planning and evaluating outcomes.

Employment History

(Jan 2005 to Apr 2007)

Chief Executive

Peterborough

Full responsibility for all aspects of leading charity through a period of significant change.
• Led charity through period of significant change, establishing the first permanent office, introducing professional finance system, developing HR procedures and guiding process of incorporation.
• Handled delicate process around redundancy and recruitment of key staff whilst maintaining service delivery.
• Worked closely with staff and volunteers to deliver high quality services to families, ensuring that significant risks were identified and mitigated.
• Developed first strategic plan, starting from an analysis of stakeholder need and gaining acceptance from trustees.
• Instigated professional approach to fundraising, centred on strategic planning and aiming for long term stability by diversifying funding streams.
• Bought in print and finishing equipment to allow production of publications as required thereby slashing the previous Ł40k pa spend.
• Renegotiated Ł250k Government grant and guided subsequent project to satisfaction of fund-holder.

(Sep 1989 to Aug 2004)

Head of Technical Research

Peterborough

Leading team of 25 specialist research staff. Ł600k budget plus EU projects up to Ł1m pa. Member of divisional management.
• Analysed and fully restated all 1300 lines of the divisional budget in such a way that budget holders and service managers could understand their contribution to the divisional budget reduction of Ł1.2m.
• Developed a mature attitude towards quality amongst management team and laid the foundation from which the division gained ISO9000 accreditation.
• Promoted needs of disabled people within context of Disability Discrimination Act, particularly endorsing universal design.
• Motivated IT graduate staff through training and securing interesting projects and, thereby, increased average retention from about 2 years to over 5 years.
• Developed and used a sector job evaluation scheme to counteract difficulty in recruiting and retaining ICT staff across the organisation. This reduced failed recruitments by 60%.
• Successfully negotiated several EU funded research projects, each worth up to 3M€ and involving up to 12 partners from across Europe.
• Managed and conducted user centred research related to state of the art technologies, including voice interaction, semantic mark-up and web accessibility.
• Delivered 14 papers at international research conferences drawn from a programme of technical awareness and working with world leaders in several technologies linked to visual impairment.
• Established new research code that helped to protect Ł30M of voluntary funding by improving quality of high visibility research.
• Stood firm on the integrity of research results, even where they questioned the utility of the project outcomes, which gained the approbation of the EU expert reviewers on number of occasions.
• Acted as expert reviewer on public funded projects and helped to secure additional funding of Ł500k.