East Midlands Leadership Awards – meet the shortlist

In the first of a new series, we’ll be profiling those shortlisted in our forthcoming East Midlands Leadership Awards.

Tickets are now available for the event, to be held from 12-3pm on Wednesday 6 November at the Crowne Plaza in Nottingham, which will celebrate the cream of East Midlands business leadership as we crown those steering their companies or organisations to success.

In the first of the series, we take a look at the Best Company Leader (100+ employees).

Duncan Green

Duncan Green is managing partner of property, construction and infrastructure consultancy Pick Everard and is based at the firm’s head office in Leicester. He is responsible for setting the business development strategy and future direction of the business in terms of growth and development. He is also a Director of Perfect Circle, a joint shareholding with two partner firms, and spent the first two years since its establishment as chairman.

He plays a key role in Pick Everard securing new contracts and maintaining client relationships, having been instrumental in the work we continue to do for organisations throughout the East Midlands and beyond.

Since taking over as Pick Everard’s managing partner in 2014, Green has showed extraordinary leadership in driving the firm to its highest ever levels of business performance – culminating recently in winning the 2019 best business performance (large consultancy) award from prestigious industry-body, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering.

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Peter Owen

Peter Owen has been with Willmott Dixon for over 30 years and during the last 14 years has held the positon of managing director for the Midlands Division. In 2005 the annual turnover for the business was £64m and today in 2019, it is on target for £200m and increasing to £230m in 2020.

During this time Owen has grown not only the Midlands business but also developed new sectors and regions for the Group. He has appointed and coached key roles that have gone on to develop significant contributions for the national business. In particular the MD for the Northern business who he recruited, will this year turnover £180m and now has his own team over 280 people.

Owen’s team in the Midlands is now over 350 people and he heads up a Board of nine. At any given time his Midlands business is running 14–19 live projects, a mix of pre-construction and construction activities.

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Rod Benham

Rod Benham is the managing director of Dawsongroup TCS and has been with the company for over 21 years. Through his clear and strong vision, Benham has led the stellar growth of the business from a £12m to a £20.7M turnover business, increasing the number employed from 94 to the current team of 136.

Benham started his career at Dawsongroup as the management accountant in the Truck and Trailer business. His entrepreneurial flair was spotted early and with the added benefit of having experience in asset rental, he was appointed commercial manager at TCS following the acquisition by Dawsongroup of Portable Cold Storage. Just 18 months later, he was promoted to the position of managing director.

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Shahid Sheikh

Prior to Shahid Sheikh becoming managing director it took 33 years for Clifton Packaging to hit the £10m turnover mark. Clifton ended 2018 at just over £24 million turnover. Shahid has organically doubled the turnover in just over five years, and he says there’s more to come. He has set the goal to hit £30m turnover before the end of 2020 and he’s on track to do it.

Late in 2018 Shahid added a new 100,000 sq ft space to Clifton’s current manufacturing facility.

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Stewart Vandermark

Stewart Vandermark became chief executive of Nelsons in June 2017, which marked the first leadership change since the company was set up in 1983. He has a full time management role where he is responsible for the strategic oversight of the firm.

Twelve months after Vandermark became chief executive, Nelsons launched a fresh vision and values. The business has defined and internally communicated its vision to ensure that each employee clearly understands Nelsons’ how, what and why, including its three and 10-year targets. Nelsons is a vibrant, dynamic and innovative law firm and in January 2019, launched its new brand to reflect that.

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