We’re always keen to learn more about the Executive Finance community in our region. We know there are many who are involved in competitive sports, triathlons and fitness challenges; there are also those who lend their spare time and skills on a voluntary basis to many good causes in their communities.

It was incredibly interesting to hear John Dunstan's story. John is Finance Director at Interflora in Lincolnshire, and is also a Trustee of a company linked to a multi-academy school trust, with links to his own school days:

“I am Chair of Our Learning Cloud, a tech services company operating in the education technology sector. The Company is a wholly owned subsidiary company of a Multi Academy Trust in the state sector, a charity, and so publicly funded. As a result, my role is unpaid.

Why am I there? It’s a long story, but in short: I went to a school called Greenwood Dale Comprehensive in inner city Nottingham, left with good grades, went to college and university, and got a job in finance. One day in the late 1990’s, at work I overheard someone saying they needed a governor for my school who had some finance ability, so I volunteered. As a young management accountant, it gave me great experience in governance, recruitment and disciplinary processes, and made me feel really good giving something back. It also meant I was technically the boss of some of my old teachers!

Time moved on, and I ended up being a trustee of the now much evolved multi academy trust: Greenwood Academies Trust. 35 academies, 40,000 pupils, very different from the original school I attended. By now a Finance Director in my day job, I was on the Trust Board and Chair of the Audit Committee. Workload and overseas travel led me to step down, but I retained an involvement in the small trading company subsidiary of the MAT. That ended up being the vehicle for our Trust to pilot selling its proven IT services to other academies and MATs, and now that the pilot has proved successful, we’ve separated the business entirely and are gearing up for expansion. All still for the benefit of our 100% shareholder, the publicly funded Greenwood Academies Trust.

What motivates me, as well as making my first Chair role a success, is the simple fact that the value I help create will go into a fund to help underprivileged kids like me get the most from their education, such as school trips, extra-curricular activities, and other paid resources; giving them the best chance of equity and opportunity in the world of work further down the line."