Peter Henry

Peter Henry is the retired Managing Director of Focus on Growth the company he founded and ran from 2007 - 2023 to provide Strategic, Marketing, Research and General Business advice. In parallel, he has at various times been an Investor and Non-Executive Director of APA Parafricta Ltd (Medical Devices), a member of Azure Partners, Management Consultants specialising in Exit Planning and a Trustee for the brain injury charity Headway Aylesbury Vale.

His career, spanning over 50 years, encompassed marketing, sales and general management across a very wide range of industries including FMCG, Business-to-Business, Service Industries, Utilities and Not-for-Profit. These included Procter and Gamble, Bacofoil, Smiths Crisps, Diners Club, TNT Express Worldwide, British Gas, Age UK and The Children’s Society, as well as a number of smaller companies.

Currently he is both a volunteer and county supporter for the charity Schoolreaders whose crucial aim is to improve the life chances of primary school children from deprived backgrounds by helping them to achieve the age-appropriate level of reading by the time they move to secondary education.

Other voluntary roles include:

• Enterprise Advisor with the Bucks Skills hub, focused on introducing secondary students to a variety of career options through exposure to a range of employers.
• Working with the Chiltern Chamber of Commerce to recruit new local businesses.

He has been a volunteer, assisting CV development, for the Careers Springboard since 2021 and is looking forward to becoming more involved with this organisation.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, married with two adult sons and two grandchildren. He is a keen tennis player, amateur photographer and enjoys the theatre, art galleries and travel.

Careers Springboard

Looking for a job in the UK at present is more difficult than I can ever remember, and while the media are much focused on youth unemployment the reality for senior managers, especially those who have been made redundant, is just as challenging.

Careers Springboard, a charity run entirely by highly qualified volunteers, is a self-help group of professionals, managers and graduates seeking work. The weekly zoom webinars attract some 100 attendees, and we provide free individual virtual sessions covering CV Preparation, Mock Interviews, Career Coaching, LinkedIn and Counselling.

I am a Trustee and responsible with my team for providing advice to help members create CVs that will present them as must-see candidates.

Since a CV is an Advertisement with the sole intent of getting the candidate an interview, my many years of experience as a Marketing Director across a very wide range of industries have given me the skills, knowledge and experience to develop tools and advice for this specific task.

If this free service is of interest to you, or indeed any of the others mentioned above, then just go to our website: careersspringboard.org.uk

Bucks Skills Hub

In addition to my work with Careers Springboard, I am also an Enterprise Advisor with the Bucks Skills Hub, helping secondary school children develop their first CVs.

Schoolreaders

The importance of literacy to a child’s life chances cannot be overemphasised. The statistics will probably horrify you as they did me:

• 1 in 4 children will leave primary education without the age-appropriate level of reading.
• Of those 25%, only 1 in 10 will get a GCSE in English and Maths.
• 57% of the prison population has a reading age of less than 11.

In essence, not being able to read properly when entering secondary education is hugely damaging to life chances.

I am a volunteer at a fantastic charity, Schoolreaders, which organises some 35,000 people to go into primary schools across England on a weekly basis to read one-to-one with children who need extra support in this area. This service is provided absolutely free of charge to schools, which is a great benefit in these days of pressure on budgets.

I can tell you that while I know what I do is important, it is difficult to express how much pleasure and satisfaction I get from the role. I am neither their teacher nor their parent — I am there to instil the joy of reading and make it as much fun as possible for my cohort of weaker readers.

If this is something that would interest you, then visit: schoolreaders.org

Career History

If you wish to know more about my working career do look at my LinkedIn profile