Nicola Russell-Brooks

I have been leading organisations for the past thirty years at a senior level.  I hold a degree in Development with Sociology 2:1 and have engaged in continuous learning opportunities throughout my career, most recently I completed the Welsh Government Leader Programme. My experience is in developing and delivering services and I have worked across the public, private, voluntary and community spectrum.  My core skills include business development and transformation using outcome based business planning processes and I practice lean thinking. My strengths lie in the management of change, managing people, the development of effective business infrastructure and in creating partnerships and collaborative working practice.

For the past 6 years I have led Age Cymru Swansea Bay through transformation to develop a sustainable business model.  This has included bringing a new social enterprise to market that has resulted in a whole new raft of services available to our clients and profit for the Charity to invest in the development of our free services to vulnerable older people living in Swansea.  I have re-engineered the structure of the services commissioned by the local authority to produce efficiency savings and I have transformed the internal business systems to create a modern fit for purpose business architecture.  

During this time I have also led on a number of collaborative frameworks to deliver pan-Wales services and I have become a NCVO PQASSO accessor to help with the third sector develop good quality business practice.