Our principal, Nigel Hudson, is a highly experienced business coach and social researcher with a passion for learning and environmental sustainability.
His environmental commitments go back a long way. In the days of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign he was dressed up as a litter bin for the kids’ fancy dress competition at the local gala! His first ever published piece of writing appeared in the 1960’s – an article on badgers for the newsletter of the junior section of the Derbyshire Naturalists Trust. Back to the present, he’s recently completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Environmental Management with the Open University and a survey on local environmental priorities for Climate Action North East Derbyshire.
For the last five years, Nigel has worked as a part-time enterprise coach with Clowne Enterprise. Much of this work has involved providing one-to-one support for people in North Derbyshire who are starting their own business. He has also run several local Enterprise Clubs during that time and previously volunteered as a business mentor with the Prince’s Trust. He founded, and for almost two decades, led the consultancy Stratagia. His research and labour market intelligence work for the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative (SFEDI) included their skills assessment for small businesses and business support and the qualifications strategy that followed from this. He authored a discussion paper, Think big, act small: will the system ever meet the needs of small businesses?, for the UK Skills Convention in 2002 and a paper on UK small business policy to the International Council for Small Business World Conference in Turku, Finland in 2007. In 2010 he received the SFEDI Special Achievement Award for raising enterprise training and support standards in the UK.
More recent research work has included several studies with colleagues at Work Advance. A research assessment was completed for the Skills for a Sustainable Skyline task force in Central London led by the City of London Corporation and Constructing the Future was a major study for City & Guilds on the impact of Industry 4.0 in the construction industry. This identified structural problems in the industry’s ability to recruit skilled people and what would be needed to address this problem and deliver the ongoing skills development for existing personnel.
Prior to this Nigel worked in the public sector in both local and national government, latterly as a senior research officer in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
Nigel is a member of the Social Research Association and so is bound by their professional, ethical standards.