Mentors

Damian is a man with vastly varied talents and experience. Damian has worked in all sectors of public and private business, government, education, media and the NHS. Damian has a BA Hons in Community Studies focusing on Health and Social Care, an MSc in Paediatrics and Child Health and a post 16 years old education post-graduate certificate PGCE and ILM Level 7 in Coaching and mentoring and is a certified practitioner with the European Coaching and Mentoring Council.

I support organisations to be more strategic in their communications, working with them to identify their audiences and enabling them to tell great stories about what they do.

I have been working in the hospitality industry for over 20 years of which I have gained experience in a variety of food outlets. I ran a small mobile transport café for 5 years, followed by building a licenced restaurant. Over 11 years I grew the restaurant into a popular place to dine all year round. I have a, very “ hands on” approach to business but also delegate tasks in order to progress with other building projects.

Hello, my name is Dan. I have 30+ years’ experience in Logistics, Energy (Oil & Gas) and Retail sectors.  I’ve worked primarily in large originations in Operational, Sales, Marketing and Strategy roles.
If you need help with your Sales Strategy, Sales Excellence, Sales Coaching or Commercial Plan I’d be glad to talk.
 

Welsh Speaker

CEO of Retail Merchandising Services (RMS) and founder of Flex, Daniel has used his experience in delivering transformational change to grow and strengthen his late father’s legacy.

Darren Walsh is Director & Leadership Coach, with Making Lean Work Ltd.  He has over 30 years’ experience leading transformation with the likes of Sony Aiwa, Sega, Boston Scientific, Parker, Zodiac Aerospace
& with the Lean Institute. 

Originally an Industrial Engineer, Darren qualified with a Lean Masters’ Degree through Cardiff Business School’s, Lean Enterprise Research Centre in 2004.  He is also certified Zenge-Miller Leadership Instructor, Prosci Change Management Practitioner and voluntary business mentor for Business Wales. 

I am a serial entrepreneur with 25+ years' experience of starting, running and selling businesses. I have successfully sold 3 businesses, but also had some failures, all of which has contributed to me learning many valuable lessons.

As a founder, I have worked in a hands-on capacity in nearly every aspect of a business during my career: leadership/management, sales, marketing, operations, customer service, engineering, finance, HR, legal etc.  I have established and built out these functions and then recruited excellent people to take them over.

My mission for GSD is quite simple.  I want to help entrepreneurs and the SME market flourish and be the best they can be every day. With 20 years of managerial experience at a FTSE 100 company I understand the importance of investing time with clients to really understand their needs and objectives.  The small and simple steps applied, help drive performance and increase business efficiencies which will lead to sustainable and profitable growth.

I have worked for over 40 years in different Industries. The first 20 years as a Food Technologist and Manager in the Food Industry. Companies like Kraft General Foods, Nabisco, Northern Foods, Eden Vale. Running Operations, R&D and Engineering over multiple sites in the UK with links to mainly American parent companies. The last 20 years were working in Industrial manufacturing, British Gypsum, Armstrong Insulation products (now Armacell) and Parker Hannifin. Mainly in General Management roles and Business Development.

During the 1970’s David studied Engineering and working for British Aerospace on a variety of projects for Concorde, environmental testing for a solar array for Intelsat IV and redundancy theory in respect of missile systems.

David found this sector although interesting slow progression, he moved to Sir M MacDonald and Partners for the next five years as an engineer, designs for irrigation schemes in Nigeria and Iraq. In 1982 for eight years David was project manager for Balfour Beatty Projects and Engineering.