Over the past couple of months we have been in the process of recruiting a new CEO for the Social Investment Business, ably assisted by the search guru David Fielding. We had an extraordinarily high volume of applications, from some very experienced and well qualified people.
That meant we had a very strong field to choose from and I can now report we have appointed Jonathan Jenkins to the role.
Jonathan has over 15 years’ experience in raising finance for small and medium projects from his City career, which included time at a UK merchant bank, and culminated in his role as managing director of Plus Markets, a stock exchange created to enable access to capital for small companies.
His career has been in the commercial provision of investment readiness and investor relations, using his contact base of lawyers, accountants, brokers and both retail and institutional shareholders.
Jonathan joined UnLtd in September 2008 as Director of Ventures, specifically tasked with creating the UnLtd Advantage investment readiness programme and team, to meet the requirement for such intermediary support within the social investment market.
He is currently on secondment to the Big Lottery and NESTA working on Big Society Capital. An active contributor to the sector, Jonathan is on various advisory panels looking at social finance (Shared Impact for example which is setting up an online platform to refinance social investors’ loan portfolios). He also holds various charity trustee appointments such as Young Enterprise and Bright Charity.
Jonathan is 41, married with one daughter and lives in Isleworth (where that one wonders?). He has a First from CASS Business School in banking and international finance, so I didn't just appoint someone from Oxford....
During the recruitment process we were particularly impressed with Jonathan’s enthusiasm for more partnership and joint working across the social finance sector. And we think his appointment will be seen as a very positive sign of SIB wanting to work with others in building social finance markets.
Jonathan will join the organisation on September 26th. He is aware of the various challenges we face; but we were struck by his ambition for the role and his belief that we have a strong future. We think he will bring some great new energy and determination to the organisation. There is muich to be done as social finance roles out.
Finally, Jonathan wanted to pass on this message -
“This is a really exciting time to be joining The Social Investment Business, with where the market is going there are lots of opportunities in the social investment market and the Social Investment Business is ideally placed to develop these both on its own and in partnership.”
We shall be hearing more of Jonathan No 2!
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