Chalke Valley History Festival

Recruitment of New Managing Director

Credentials of Andrew Williams

summary

Experienced MD / FD of £1m-turnover businesses in Property and Academic Marketing. CVHF devotee and History graduate

  • CVHF Devotee - I have visited almost every day of every festival since it commenced, 2023 will be no exception; I have huge affection for the festival

  • History Buff - degree, A level and O level, strong knowledge of most periods, avid reader, historic place visitor, subscriber to James H’s ‘We Have Ways’ podcast and a certain rival presented by his brother :;

  • Background in Academic Marketing - much of my career has been spent marketing to colleges and students

  • Entrepreneurial Spirit - necessary for a small organisation to thrive: built four businesses, three of them successfully, recently sold the last one for £20m+; I know what it takes to make the nuts and bolts of a business work

  • Business Skilled - trained as a chartered accountant in Big Six firm; literate in finance, accounting, strategy, marketing, law etc; able to combine MD and FD role

  • Local - brought up in the West Country, previously lived in Amesbury, and keen to move back

  • Personal - age 53, keen on sports - might augment the seam bowling attack for James H’s cricket team

  • Available full-time - since I sold my business above in Dec 2022

Education / Early career

  • Professional

    • Trained as chartered accountant at Big Six firm (Arthur Andersen)

    • Chartered Accountancy - Conversion Course and PE1

  • University

    • University of Cambridge - Post Grad course “Shakespeare in History”

    • University of Leeds - BA Hons International History and Politics - Upper Second

  • Secondary

    • 2x S levels - History and Economics - distinctions

    • 3x A levels - History, Economics - at grade A; Maths

    • 1x AO level - General Studies - grade A

    • 9x O levels - Maths, English Lang, English Lit, Chemistry and History - at grade A; Physics, French, Art, Statisticsand

Business Career in Venture Capital
Founder and CEO of five £1m+ Turnover businesses

Real Estate

Rainbow Capital property Ltd (1995 - 2022)

Residential landlord and builder based in London
www.rainbowcapital.co.uk

  • Owned 24 investment properties in London accommodating 125 young professional tenants and generating £1.2m of annual income; six staff

  • Managed 100 building developments

  • 2022 sold business for £22m

Rainbow Property (2023 - )

Building business based in London
www.rainbowproperty.co.uk

  • Early stage

  • Staffing now, creating website, marketing materials, client base and business plan

Academic Marketing

OxbridgeGroup Ltd (1999 - 2011)

Careers Advisory and Recruitment based in London and Oxbridge www.oxbridge-group.com

  • Aimed at current and former Oxbridge students; campus marketing

  • 20 to 80 staff; £1m - £5m annual revenue; reverse takeover of larger firm in dot-com boom; sought IPO at £40m valuation

  • Clients included Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, McKinsey and Tesco; ran numerous outsourced graduate recruitment programmes for investment banks, hedge funds and private equity including Greenhill

The Gateway Online Ltd (2007 - 2010)

Student newspaper and publishing group based in London; www.wiki.com

  • Produced fortnightly newspaper featuring careers resources and social networking website; presenting careers advertising in the context of relevant theory and news stories

  • Aimed at 15 Russell Group universities; 50,000 copies distributed each month

  • Upto £1m annual revenue; 10 staff

 

Oxbridgelife Ltd (2003 - 2005 - )

Social networking platform for current students and former alumni of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge;

  • Forerunner of Facebook, very similar apart from the £2bn valuation

  • £1m of personal investment

  • No revenue model; business did not succeed

Interests

  • History

    • National Trust, English Heritage, Historic Royal Palaces, battlefield visits, museums, history podcasts, literary festivals, talks and events, history-orientated world travel

  • Music and past-times

    • Play piano and guitar

    • Love chess, cryptic crosswords and pub quizzes

  • Sport

    • Playing - soccer, cricket, tennis and running (London Marathon 3 hours 48 minutes)

    • Watching - season ticket holder at Liverpool FC, often to be found in the stands at England test cricket matches and ATP tennis tournaments

recent Essays on History

“Assess the Significance of Martin Luther King”

“How Effective was the Policy of Containment in Korea between 1950 and 1953?”

“Charles 1st: Why Did He Fail?”

Academic Study at Degree level (1988 - 1991)

  • The Origins of WW2

  • European History (1815 - 1945)

  • British History (1815 - present day)

  • US Foreign Policy and the Cold War (1945 - present day)

  • Russia (1815 - present day)

Self-Study / Recent Reading

  • WW2

  • Wars of the Roses (1377 - 1485)

  • Cambridge Spies (1930s - 1960s)

  • Vietnam War (1954 - 75)

  • The Space Race (1961 - 72)

Business Skills

  • Operations

    • Mastery of technical knowledge and operating efficiency; process orientated; good systems skills

  • Results

    • Focussed on profit, cashflow, growth, and success

  • Experience

    • 25 years starting, leading and selling businesses in different sectors, through good and bad times

  • Strategy

    • Literate in economics, finance, accounting, law, regulation, marketing, operations

  • People

    • Managed hundreds of people, recruiting, training and leading; warm stakeholder relationships

 Referees

  • Richard Hoyle - Managing Director in Investment Banking, formerly Greenhill and Lazard, now Evercore; 07711 090090

  • Marlon Chigwende - Managing Director in Private Equity, formerly Investment Banker at Greenhill and Goldman Sachs, and Private Equity at Carlyle; 07983 378550

  • Malcolm Pein - Chief Executive, Chess in Schools, Chess Correspondent for Daily Telegraph; 07770 915823

Some Possible Strategic Objectives for CVHF

(from a position of total ignorance!)


  • Financial

    • Switch the income mix from being overly-reliant on donations. To be sustainable, the festival should finance itself and not rely on the kindness of strangers. And ideally make a reinvestable ‘profit’ - more profit / revenue means more for its good cause

    • Having said this, grants are better than donations and all money should be maximised

    • On-sell more £ to visitors - the equivalent of tee-shirts and mugs, although not tee-shirts and mugs

  • Operational

    • Create a more year-round and national presence rather than just a time-isolated and geographically-localised week in summer. The name ‘Festival’ implies a one-off fun event

    • Broaden the visitor demographic from mostly white men in their 60s

  • Practical

    • Make the wifi work

All the above should be caveated by saying the Festival itself is fantastic and hard to improve upon. The setting, the visitor experience, the talks, shows and re-enactments are close to perfect. The line-up for 2023 is, IMO, the best ever.

It is therefore the operational aspects, the nuts and bolts, behind the scenes, where a new MD might have most impact