Ian Harper graduated from the prestigious Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Army in 1979 and was ranked in the top 5% of 650 students in his year. Assigned to the Infantry where he quickly developed and honed his skills in personnel management, training and development, business continuity planning, risk management and security planning. After 16 years of military life moved to the private sector initially completing a full time MBA, graduating top with distinction, proving his outstanding strategic, marketing and operational management capability and skills.

Over a 9 year period, he gained significant experience in the private sector in marketing, branding, preparing proposals and recruitment. Notably, he spent 18 months as a consultant working for the British Forces Germany Health Commission to maximise the £54m budget for healthcare services for a population at risk of 54,000 spread across Western Europe. During which, Ian helped to deliver over £11m in efficiencies through tighter secondary care management and contracting based on a bespoke data base he wrote and his analysis following deep data mining. He developed the communications strategy in support of the change management process for the Health Commission.

Ian re-joined the Army in 2002 as a Medical Planning Officer and assigned to the Ministry of Defence (Whitehall) as part of a six-man strategic medical planning group to develop and deliver the strategic restructure of Healthcare for the whole of Defence, covering 250,000 personnel spread across the globe and a budget of around £600m. His role included defining and articulating the performance criteria and management plans, managing the project and risk plan, producing management board reports and the overall communication strategy and plans for stakeholder engagement. He was further responsible for managing 11 projects under the Defence Heath Change Programme.

Ian was promoted and assigned as the head of corporate strategic planning for the Joint Medical Command, an organisation responsible for 8500 healthcare professionals and a budget of £148m. Here he restructured and more tightly aligned the performance management, risk and reporting system having for the first time, clearly defining the corporate objectives for the organisation on behalf of the Chief Executive. He led the organisation’s restructure and re-branding and project managed the relocation and streamlining of 3 strategic head offices from London, Oxford and Gosport to the Midlands. He wrote and executed the communications strategy for the whole strategic change programme. Further, he was the lead author in researching and witting the Manpower strategy for Defence Medicine, re-defining the training pathway for general surgeons and authoring the paper that improved the health outcomes for complex battlefield injuries through forward deployment and cross speciality team working of plastic surgeons.

Ian has deployed twice on active service to Afghanistan, the first as the Deputy Medical Director in Helmand Province responsible for managing 5 hospitals and over 20 medical centres supporting 48,000 combat troops, which expanded by at least 30% to include Afghan civilians. During this time, he identified the need for and successfully ran a non-literate environmental health campaign to reduce sickness rates amongst the Afghan police and Army. During this time, he demonstrated comfort at working across ethic cultures using his diplomacy skills by effectively developing very strong relationships with the heads of medicine for the regional Afghan Police and Army, at a level not previously done. This required Ian placing himself at considerable personal risk. During this time, he also negotiated with the Camp Bastion (the size of Reading) base commander an innovative approach to improve ambulance response times, which included crossing a live and active runway as well as being the driving force to deliver a coherent and coordinated ambulance service in the wider Helmand Valley servicing an Afghan population of 3 million. The second time he deployed to Afghanistan he demonstrated his versatility by running the communications campaign of the UK forces during the last critical 6 months of military operations in Afghanistan involving considerable cross Government liaison and collaboration.

Ian is married to a Tania who is a consultant Plastic Surgeon, Consultant Advisor to the Army, a key note speaker at International Conferences and faculty head for two major national clinical training faculties. His two children are at University and studying subjects aligned to healthcare.

Education / Membership of Professional Institutes

MBA (Distinction)

MA Management (Distinction)

MSc HRD (Distinction)

MA Marketing (Distinction)

Post Graduate Diploma – Operations Management

Member of City & Guilds (level 7) – MA equivalent

Fellow – Royal Society of Public Health

Fellow – Chartered Management Institute

Fellow – Chartered Institute of Marketing

Fellow – Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development

Fellow – Institute of Healthcare Management

Early engagements saw Fred with various London Stockbroking firms, together with studies at the City of London College, and after 5 years of training and development within Stock Exchange practices and procedures took up the role of Contracts Manager at Stirling & Co based in the City, before moving onto Hoare Govett stockbrokers, a well establish old city firm. Here he managed Pension Funds/Trusts, Investment Trusts, and Unit Trusts daily.

After several years was promoted to run the company’s foreign bond markets. Where in eleven years at the forefront had 11 data analysis under his supervision and successfully increased the business coverage to include:

Treasury Bills & Notes / Floating Rate Bonds

Syndicated Loans / Financial Futures Markets (London)

Within this time amassed an excellent network of bond dealers / market traders / city analysis / senior banking executives as well as connections to finance houses within the Middle East / Federal Reserve Bank / Compliance officers, and international auditing specialists.

Achievements

2008 – 2012 Business Ambassador – London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Accomplished speaker and serial business net worker, business negotiator and dealmaker. Previous engagements with 2 FTSE companies in developing their business / marketing strategy. Successfully enjoying top spot in sales performance within the UK market. Accreditation gained through senior management training modules. Supported global telecommunication company with its infrastructure and marketing strategy. Founder and Chief Executive of a vehicle fleet/hire maintenance business, winning contracts from many of the UK’s leading providers.

Board member of International Christian Care Foundation a charitable Organisation providing support and assistance to under privilege young people within the Thames Gateway through capacity building programmes and initiatives.

David has over 30 years’ experience in Engineering, Procurement, Supply Chain and Project Management covering both operational and strategic roles for a number of major Global organisations. David has extensive experience in Europe, The Americas, Australia, and Asia through a wide-ranging career covering Automotive, Manufacturing, Construction and Utilities. Has held senior leadership positions over the last 20 years, with three at Board level in multi £Bn businesses. He has transitioned best practice and experience across sectors.

David instigated and led major change programmes in several Global businesses to enable the delivery of improved functional performance in service, value, and operational capability. Strong on development of people and teams. David has a passion to position the Procurement and Supply Chain functions where they can provide greatest benefit to an organisation or project and create a significant strategic in cost, project surety, time and health and safety.

Will is an international master planner and architect since 1983 with extensive in-field experience in 19 countries around the world.  Will has expertise in ekistics, community structures, poverty alleviation, food security and regional anti-fragility and holds board positions with:

• Bion Energy Ltd, Director of innovations and new technologies
• Hygea Blu – Global Ltd, Managing Director, an SPV established to manage the Islamabad Global Leisure City.
• ARGO Architects + Engineers + Master planners, Managing Director, a professional practice established in 1983.
• Blue Ring, Director, an SPV established to manage the repatriation of extremely damaged landscapes and resolve food security issues using science-based solutions and technologies.
• JALA, Co-founder, a company established to make impoverished “unbanked” populations visible and able to engage in non-usury commercial banking and lending.

Will is currently coordinating poverty alleviation and food security initiatives in Payatas and San Raphael in the Philippines and in developing a high yield hydroponic fodder production unit for livestock in Australia and in Syria in response to the current food crisis.

Will has designed several cities and regional centres around the world including Jakarta Utara for the Ambassador Group, Podsucka Novy Mesto in Slovakia for (at the time) the Czechoslovakian Government.  Will has also master planned several major tourism resort destinations, water adventure parks, zoological gardens and leisure attractions in Malaysia and Indonesia with a tourism destination masterplan of national significance for the Woppaburra Indigenous Community soon to be developed on the Great Barrier Reef, Central Queensland Coast, Australia.

Enthusiastic professional Development and Marketing Director, with over twenty years’ experience in developing strategies, building key relationships, and marketing the projects to maximum outcomes for all partners involved. Results and conscience driven.

Experienced Industry writer and presenter of certified Continued Professional Development seminars and workshops, including CPD working at heights, design and installation of high-rise safety fall protection and davit arm abseiling systems.

Development, strategy, and marketing implementations, increasing brand awareness, revenue streams and getting Industry recognition as a leading innovative company.

Responsible for writing many successful businesses award applications including winning the Sustainable City of London Environmental Awards, representing London in the European Environmental awards and winning the Retro Expo awards.

Writer and presenter of CPD “Working at heights & safety systems” including abseiling davit arm systems.

Introduced the company to the construction industry World showcase MIPIM (Cannes) attended and returned with new contracts and partnerships with significant developers and contractors.

Instigated and coordinated a one-hour documentary for the company for ITV 1 television, (Don’t Look Down) which resulted in attaining our biggest ongoing contract to date.

Business Development – Marketing. Corporate Executive box sales / promotions / Marketing, at West Ham United, one of the largest London, Premier League football clubs.  I worked with the management and commercial office to promote the football club to corporate clients, sponsorship partners and a wider football audience. Involved with the bidding team to move the Club to a new ground at the London, Olympic Stadium which was successfully won in 2012 Liaised with the football players on high profile charity and promotional events and instigated my family being the worldwide promotional faces of WHUFC 2009 -2010 with actor Ray Winstone.

I have a real passion for the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants to live healthy, sustainable connected lives.

David has 30 years in ‘C suite’ executive roles, with local and corporate experience in global markets across a diverse range of industry sectors including his role as Managing Director for an ASX listed company and Managing Director of a SE Asian sustainable consulting and investment advisory group.

David works closely with a proven network of corporate investors/buyers, finance associates and investment specialist on the restructure, expansion, and growth of companies – with a focus on sustainability and delivering “positive social and environmental impact outcomes”.

He has successfully overseen and managed corporate restructures, including the consolidation of 700 retail sites into one consolidated national; national re-invigoration of a leading entertainment/licensing company; successful integration of new capital into an ASX listed company, and successful funding for global clients, including a division of the European Investment Bank (EIB).

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Bion Energy is principal stakeholder in 3 other companies:

Hygea Blu Ltd                    Medical and PPE goods and services

Hygea Blu – Global Ltd         Poverty Alleviation focus on Islamabad Pakistan

Fusion Blu Ltd                    Emission reduction device

Together with the above Bion Energy actively supports and assist with many innovation businesses within the UK as well as overseas.