Experienced business manager joins Skills for Growth

Jamie de Sousa has been appointed to Skills for Growth to lead and manage their client services team. The Client Services Manager will have oversight of service provision and targets, including leading on developing a new curriculum to satisfy the needs of employers and participants.

Skills for Growth is a charity that focuses on the provision of key skills to young people between the ages of 16-24 to help them into work. They offer a range of services to meet this aim, from employer workshops and seminars to work experience and full-time apprenticeships.

This search process covered a wide range of organisations within the education and public sectors, including local councils, educational product developers, universities and skills and employment charities. We looked for people with a high level of experience running external partnerships, services and managing client accounts.

Jamie began his career at MapInfo Ltd, a computer software company, where he managed over 40 global accounts and delivered a series of high value projects and contracts for large organisations. He then moved on to hold Sales Manager roles for market research, healthcare and management software companies before taking his expertise in sales and business development to the Not-for-Profit sector in 2010. His move to the social enterprise, Striding Out, as Project Manager was not a complete divorce from his previous work, however. Since 2008, Jamie has donated his spare time to the Krizevac Project in Malawi, helping them to create three social enterprises and design training courses for employees, and assisting the mentoring network, Freshideas Events, to improve their income generation.

Jamie’s extensive commercial experience, and his ability to adapt his knowledge and experience to make an impact on small organisations in the not-for-profit sector, will be an exciting addition to the team at Skills for Growth, helping them to improve their offering to both participants and partner employers.