Meet the board: John

My name’s John Wells, I’m a director of Abio which is a company that I actually run as a business consultancy. I’m also a director of ACH and I’m chair of Himilo Organisation. I think I’ve bought a lot of experience – I have probably quite a unique senior management experience in the different roles that I’ve had; quality, personnel, I.T., running a manufacturing site with 1200 people, leadership and development. I am a fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and I’m a fellow of the Institute of Consulting so those skills that I have, I believe I’ve been able to pass on to some of the people in the organisation.

Why and when did you choose to become a board member for ACH?

I knew Fuad from 2013, I was his program tutor on the Aston University Goldman Sachs programme (ten thousand small business programme). I was very interested in ACH from that time. At that time it was quite small, it was probably 10 to 15 people and that’s at the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. Shortly after that, Fuad asked me if I would like to become a board member and I said yes because I’d enjoyed working with him. It’s been interesting to see how Fuad has actually developed himself and not only himself, but the organisation and tremendous strides have actually been made, so that’s how I became involved with both ACH and Himilo.

I want to see both ACH and Himilo go from strength to strength. As I say, we’ve grown from 10 to 15 people to 65 people plus and approaching £4million in terms of turnover. In 2025, I would like this organisation to probably be turning over more than £12million, probably employing a hundred or so people in both of the organisations. I’m there to help facilitate that, but it’s down to the people and the management and indeed Fuad’s aspirations just to actually support that and make things happen.