Owen
Owen has been Director of Aspire Foundation for over 4 years.
Owen joined EMAP as a trainee journalist after studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. At weekends, he volunteered for a local night shelter and co-founded a football club with a group of homeless men. Learning that players struggled to find work and find housing, Owen co-founded a social enterprise Aspire East, a franchise of the pioneering fair-trade catalogue company Aspire.
After undertaking the innovative community enterprise masters course at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, he became fascinated by the potential in sharing social business ideas and was recruited as Director of Social Franchising on a national DTI-funded programme with Community Action Network in London, supporting social enterprises to scale.
He’s also completed a Winston Churchill Fellowship studying social enterprise in Australia and the United States, and is a 2012 Clore Social Leadership Fellow.
Paul
Paul spent 23 years of his career building his own successful business, Concord Ltd, and along the way marrying Elaine and having two wonderful kids, Jack and Jessie.
When he sold Concord 3 years ago the company had grown to employ 120 staff with a reputation for its ethical approach to employment. Not long into early retirement and even with the arrival of Hannah, their energetic 5yr old foster-child, Paul still missed the buzz of business.
Now he is back in charge of creating and advising the creation of new businesses for Aspire Foundation and leading our Start Your Own Business programmes.
Simon
Social Enterprise Manager
Simon has been managing in the social enterprise and care sectors for several years. He brings to the team a wealth of management and training skills with which to develop and progress our own social enterprise Aspiring Community Works.
At his time at Aspiring Community Works, Simon’s been integral to both the smooth running of our operations team on the ground and long term strategic planning of the enterprise giving him a unique understanding of delivering social benefit to the community.
Kevin
Team Leader
A lifetime in construction has seen Kevin working on all sorts of amazing projects including supplying glass to London’s iconic Gherkin building. “I felt it’s time to be able to give some of my experience and knowledge back to some of the younger kids who are coming up. Working for Aspire Foundation has also been good in allowing me to get training as well so I stay up date.”
Maurice
Operative
Maurice is our grounds team old hand, and if he hasn’t seen it then it hasn’t happened. Maurice has been on grounds maintenance teams working in Tower Hamlets for over 16yrs, so next time you see a bush, tree, or patch of grass in the borough; you can be sure Maurice at some point planted, pruned or cut it.
“It a great team to work for. We all have a laugh whether it’s management or a new trainee, but really it’s just nice to be able to take pride in your work. We all live around here so we want to do it better than another company would.”
Richard
Business & Enterprise Advisor
Richard has managed several small business in niche markets from environmental construction to inno
vative marketing in Malawi (Africa). During this time he’s both applied and thrown out some of the business theory of his management degree.
He brings this experience and a knowledge to Aspire foundation as our Business and Enterprise Advisor, developing both our own strategy and supporting other organisations and start ups through our Supporting Management and Start Your Own Business programmes.
Monwara
Administrator
Monwara joined Aspire back in October and has been an excellent asset to the team, providing support to both the Start Your Own Business courses and Aspire Community Works. A friendly face to those on our courses and our enterprise team, she helps the smooth running of our office, and is always on hand to deal with any queries.