Following an early academic career Mark joined a UK based specialist engineering group as Group Projects Director. Leading international sales and manufacturing programmes he travelled extensively and included working in the USA. It was during this time that Mark realised the importance of workforce skills development and he became a group advocate for apprentice recruitment, embellishing programmes with periods of learning in US based sister companies.
In 1994 mark was invited to join the British Polymer Training Association to manage the establishment of a commercial industry training organisation. Work based training programmes and company-wide training schemes led to the BPTA being regarded as an exemplar provider. He joined BEST in 2005 seeing the opportunity to support an area of tremendous potential to utilise innovative strategy in tackling the growing issue of skills shortage in the Building Services Engineering sector. During his 8 years as CEO he led its transition into a sector leader with operations in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Most recently he was CEO of Vocational Skills Partnership (Wales), one of the largest apprenticeship providers in Wales taking on 3,000 apprenticeship starts a year in sectors ranging from Health & Social Care to Food Manufacturing. Mark joins the team at Merit Skills to support business development and their growth Strategy.