David Williams Email & Phone Number

I have a simple philosophy towards business; remove complexity, understand your capabilities, and understand what is happening around you. Focus on what you do well. It sounds trite, but I've found it to be effective, enabling me to get to understand a situation, making connections between capabilities, situations and ideas, which I have then used to deliver new insights, providing innovative solutions leading to value creation. Valued for my strategic problem-solving skills, I am a proven, Board level, business leader with a career mainly in food and dairy cooperatives. I have held a number of Board positions, including Chair, in my career which has also spanned CEO and CFO/FD roles alongside senior level corporate development and M&A roles. Managing businesses and teams through growth and change has been a constant. Career highlights include:• As a member of the senior leadership teams, I played a central role in the negotiation and execution of a series of acquisitions, disposals and joint ventures that built, what were in effect start-up farmer owned cooperatives, into major national and international food businesses.• Working on the necessary development of cooperative funding and governance structures to facilitate this investment and growth.• Being the lead executive on the historic cooperative merger, and subsequent integration, of Milk Link with Arla, the major European dairy cooperative, to create a £2bn+ market leading UK dairy business.• Being asked to move to Arla head office in Viby, Denmark to create and lead the finance team for the new €1.8bn global trading and planning business unit. This involved bringing together teams from across several countries, providing a lesson in the value of diversity and how to bring the best out of a disparate, geographically separated team.• Being recruited as CEO to Omsco, the UK's only wholly organic dairy cooperative and stabilising the business, developing a new strategy and turning it around during one of the most challenging trading environments in the industry’s history.What my experience has taught me is that I am motivated by, and draw my energy from, working with teams to develop solutions and strategies to deliver real change for businesses whilst helping them get the best out of themselves. I'm now keen to offer my experience, skills, and knowledge to businesses and individuals to help support and guide them through their own strategic development and change journeys.

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  Queen Mary University Of London

  Molecular Biology & Genetics