Board

Ade Adebayo is a Chartered accountant with many years’ experience in audit and assurance roles in practice with the Big 4 and financial services organisations, specialising in strategy and business transformation. 

Ade currently works with Nationwide Building Society where he is responsible for providing assurance over the organisations portfolio of strategic and transformational change activities. In addition, Ade serves as an Independent Member of the Audit Committee of the Bristol City Council. 

Ade enjoys coaching, mentoring and inspiring individuals to becoming the best version of themselves. He lives in Bristol with his wife and kids. 

Briony is a connector, facilitator, and problem-solver. After seven years supporting the startup and scaleup community in Bristol and Bath, she is now consulting across a variety of projects. Her current portfolio includes hosting Electra (a community where awesome women unite), supporting the Create Growth Programme, running regional development activities with Rocketmakers, and being a teaching fellow for the University of Bath’s virtual Masters in entrepreneurship and innovation. In 2021 she released an open dataset with Rocketmakers to raise awareness of the Tech for Good business community locally and can always be found connecting people and signposting support. She can also help you feel better with food through her work as a nutritional therapist.

Originally destined for the Anglican priesthood, John Savage was educated at St Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar School for Boys in London. His mother was widowed at the end of the World War 2 so that he did not know his father. He acquired business management and directorship experience over more than fifty years in a broad range of companies.

From 1989 he was full-time Chief Executive of The Bristol Initiative and, from February 1993, Chief Executive of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce & Initiative, after the acquisition of the latter, and then Executive Chairman of Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative. During this period he also held many other public roles.

He remains dedicated to partnership between the private sector and local government to promote Bristol and its neighbouring communities as a vital European city region in the twenty-first century. He is passionately concerned about education, particularly for underprivileged young people.

Awarded the CBE for services to Business and Regeneration he was High Sheriff of Bristol for 2002/3 and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Education from the University of the West of England in 2003 and an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Bristol in 2005.

He maintains an unshaken Christian belief.

Colin Skellett is a scientist and engineer by training and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has worked largely in the water industry and was appointed Chief Executive of Wessex Water in 1988.

Colin is currently Chief Executive of the YTL UK Group that includes Brabazon new town and Arena Complex at Filton, Wessex Water, YTL’s UK Hotels, GENeco and a number of retail businesses.

He has had non-executive roles in rail, travel and international infrastructure businesses, served on the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency and is involved with a number of charities. Colin was also Chair of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership from 2011 until the beginning of 2016.

Colin was awarded an OBE for services to business and WaterAid in the 2012 Queen's Birthday.

Jack worked for Johnson Matthey for over 20 years, retiring from his role as technology strategy director in 2016. His career has led him to be involved in a variety of business-led and government task forces and advisory groups focusing on business/economic benefits of environmental sustainability.

Jeremy Holt is a commercial lawyer. He co-founded Clark Holt, Commercial Solicitors in Swindon, has written three books on IT law and lectures widely on the subject, and co-founded the first specialist computer museum in the country. He is a keen runner and swimmer.

Jo is responsible for helping to set the financial direction of the company, ensuring strong financial controls and sound financial viability. A key part of her role is to provide quality financial and management information to managers, the Board and contracting agencies. She's also responsible for supporting managers and helping to structure project activity in the best financial way.

Martin's core focus is the scaling of high potential SMEs, notably in the digital, eCommerce, logistics, and manufacturing sectors, where he advises, mentors, and leads ambitious teams in the pursuit of sustained success. 

With expansive experience in strategy, change management, operations, and leadership, he has previously held senior roles in large companies including Greencore and Connect Group, founded and scaled his own outsourcing business and, more recently, wrote and published the book 'Raising the Odds: How businesses achieve long-term success through scalable strength'.  His main passion is centred on helping more and more businesses to become long-term success stories and, in turn, for our economy to become stronger and more resilient.

With a track record of company and business sector turnarounds, he brings proven strategic, commercial and innovation skills to Business West along with his start up and entrepreneurial flair.   He has an interest in customer insights and experience, from implementing customer segmentation and analytics to developing company-wide customer experience improvement programmes.

Peter is an experienced leader with a particular focus on talent development and driving employee engagement.

From 1983 Phil worked in the North Sea oil & gas fields as an offshore construction engineer for an American oil company. The stagnating North Sea oil industry of the late 80’s led Phil to do an MBA at London Business School and University of California Berkeley, which was followed by a role as a mergers and acquisitions specialist at a City of London investment bank.

Phil moved to Bristol in the early 90’s to become CEO of the West of England Business Link. In 2003 Phil took on his current position as MD of Business West, the largest Chamber of Commerce in the UK, and a public purpose company, which operates the West of England Initiative and the Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire and Swindon & Wiltshire Chambers of Commerce. It also operates various public sector contracts, including Innovate UK services for the SW region.

Business West is the co-founder of Destination Bristol and the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership. Phil is Chair of the South West Ventures Fund Advisory committee and sits on the Court of Bristol University.

Poku is an award-winning social entrepreneur with a passion for levelling the playing field for low income and ethnic minority groups.

He is the founder and CEO of Babbasa - the first black-led social enterprise to win the prestigious Queens Award For Enterprise (Social Mobility) in 2020, for transforming the lives of over 2,200 ethnic minority young people in the UK. He is also the co-founder of The Black Professionals Network and Founding Curator of the World Economic Forum initiative – Bristol Global Shapers Hub.

As an African migrant with lived experience of race and class challenges, Poku also advocates and advises on social mobility, equal opportunity and inclusion, through talks, consultancy work and on key strategic boards including Business West (Chambers of Commerce), City Office (Children & Young People Board), WECA (People & Skills Board) and UWE Business School.

In 2018 the Queen honoured Poku with an invitation to Buckingham Palace for his contributions to the Commonwealth diaspora. In 2019 he was awarded the Lord Mayor’s Medal for his service to Bristol communities and named 'Person Of The Year' at the Southwest regional MTM Awards event. In 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2023, he was awarded the Cambridge Social Innovation Prize by Trinity Hall and the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation.

Poku holds a BSc in Psychology, MSc in Business Management from UWE and an Advanced Project Management Certificate from Oxford University.

Richard is an experienced business leader working for AtkinsRéalis as their UK&E Buildings and Places Market Director.  Richard works  with transport providers, local authority leaders and the private sector across the UK&E to help them navigate the evolving demands of the urban environment. From the challenges of housing delivery and under-investment in the railways, to positioning our cities, towns and high streets for post-Covid recovery. The opportunity is to  shape how the city regions take advantage of the focus and investments towards levelling up to create  thriving and connected places to live and do business.

Richard has a number of non executive roles, and is currently Chair of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership, a member of the  Western Gateway Partnership Board, a Director of Northern Powerhouse Partnership and non exec director of Business West.

Sarah is the Regional Managing Director for Bristol, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Somerset for Trinity Mirror plc. Her first managing directorship was at the Bath News & Media group where she spearheaded the revolutionary change that saw the Bath Chronicle newspaper become the first in the country to convert from being a daily title to a weekly in response to market needs. The success of the transformation helped the business to transform into a modern media company with not only a thriving weekly newspaper but also a strong and successful website.

Sarah’s role then grew to incorporate a series of successful weekly titles throughout Somerset and Dorset before she added Gloucestershire Media with its two first class daily newspapers to her management portfolio in 2009. More recently in January 2013 Sarah’s role expanded to include Bristol News & Media with two further excellent daily titles. Sarah now is in charge of hundreds of staff across three counties, producing dozens of thriving titles and websites to a weekly audience of hundreds of thousands.

Simon has a background as a chartered town planner in the private sector. For many years he was an equity partner with Barton Willmore, one of the UK’s largest employers of town planners, but he left the company when deciding to sell it to an North American PLC in 2022. Since then he has developed a portfolio of non-exec, advisory, investor and trustee roles. 

Alongside his board role at Business West he sits on its Audit and Strategy committees and has provided professional support on projects such as the regeneration of central Swindon. As Senior Counsel at JBP he advises how the public affairs company can help its clients engage with local government and other stakeholders. He is Trustee at the Guild of Guardians of Bristol, President of the Canynges Society and sits on his Parish Church’s PCC. Simon is a keen sailor and can often be found during weekends and  holidays with his family on the Cornish coast.