Jordan Cowley

Sectors: Energy, Life Science, Venture Capital, Financial Services.

Expertise: strategic partnerships, strategic relationships, people strategy, businesses development, start-up, venture capital.

Having been made redundant from my most recent role, I'm looking to join a business where I can utilise the plethora of skills that I have gained throughout my career. I hope to join an organisation that will allow me continue developing professionally, and where my personal ambitions and interests align with the business I work for.

My most recent role is focused on developing a variety of strategies for fledgling businesses. I've had the chance to work with a diverse range of sectors, from Renewables and Life Science, to SaaS. I support these businesses by advising on people strategy and navigating the world of investment. At its core, my time is largely focused on advising on company structure, product life-cycle and skill set of their future senior leadership teams, as well the challenges they are likely to experience with scale up, adoption, integration and commercial viability. This is also directly linked to the work I do with investors, supporting these businesses with the financial markets and informing them of alternative funding options, and things to avoid.

This broad framework has not only enriched my commercial acumen, it has allowed to me to engage with technical communities and networks to better understand the possibilities and challenges new technologies face. This has also meant that I've had to work on my stakeholder management when supporting technical leaders that believe they hold all the answers without considering the challenges mentioned previously.

I have developed strategic relationship management skills throughout my career. More than just good communication, I believe the key is being able to engage the interests and motivations of an individual across a wide spectrum of backgrounds. I've had to engage with corporates, academic led start-ups, and high-net-worth personalities, through to equally as wealthy farmers, surrounded by Hereford cattle! These experiences have equipped me with versatile communication skills that I believe would also be advantageous to any business.

Should my background be of interest, please feel free to reach out.

Many thanks,

Jordan Cowley

Most recent role: Partner- Strategic Partnerships & People Strategy

Day to Day-

• Developing relationships with a variety of key stakeholders including university accelerators and regional fund managers.
• Leveraging networks to develop new relationships with a variety of technology spins out from universities such as UoB, UCL, Aston and Warwick.
• Helped to develop a new pivotal strategy focusing on the engagement of the VC (Venture Capital) markets, rather than the historically saturated corporate markets.
• Undertook a review of the existing client portfolio and strategy to assess reliability, and long-term development opportunity.
• Engaging with subject matter experts to develop a technical support network, often with academic leaders.
• Developed strategic relationships with several UK based institutional investors and with various key stakeholders across multiple technical disciplines.
• Development of company network by nurturing partnerships with technical and strategic advisors in order to equip the firm with the technical expertise to create credibility in niche markets.
• Creating contact management strategies for clients, academic leaders, investment firms and the corresponding investment directors, utilising a variety of engagement methods both traditional.
• Further refinement of our Business Development strategy by focusing on the life science and energy markets, as well as broader SaaS ventures.
• Designing and implementing a marketing strategy as well as a content strategy by conducting market research and ensuring positive receipt by our target market.
• Developed a pipeline with a value of over £300,000 within 12 months, and near financial independence from the sister company.
• Created new revenue streams through the offering of consultancy services aimed at supporting clients with their fund raises by leveraging our investor network.
• Writing frameworks for investor introductions.
• Embracing and utilising new technologies into the day-to-day business such as the introduction of Chat GPT for marketing collateral, research and engagement documents.
• Representing the business at networking events to promote our services and to actively engage target market.

Advisory Work-

• Working with both clients, accelerators and investors to support the planning of strategic hires across Senior Leadership Teams for technical ventures (planning, mapping, engaging, assessing, attracting and retaining).
• Exploring and reviewing existing teams to identify talents gaps across various disciplines (e.g. marketing, finance, operations, commercial, technical) and informing the mandate framework (Job Specification, People Specification).
• Supporting the development of internal recruitment policy, providing oversight of legal requirements (internal employment law, best practices (e.g. Diversity & Inclusion etc)).
• Actioning best practice principles during searches whilst educating clients (both Executives and Investors) on the importance of these, e.g. strategic advantages of a strong Diversity & Inclusion policy.
• Adapting to our function agnostic approach by supporting searches across various disciplines, and being aware of how these impact both our engagement with the market, and the advice provided on engagement, assessment and retention.
• Advising on wider (workforce) talent acquisition and retention strategies due to my unique experience and knowledge of cultural barriers and challenges (e.g. academic commercialisation, working from home, contingency planning, incentive strategies etc).
• Advising on board structures and providing the insight required for key stake holders to make informed decisions.
• Providing alternative solutions to challenges based on varying challenges such as: financial constraints, time pressure, board/investor pressure, hard exits etc.

Previous role: Account Manager

• Managed commercial development for 3 offices simultaneously across the South East (Reading, Cobham, Harrow).
• Managed to secure business cases based on development of farming networks not previously explored and engaging in local community activity.
• Utilising additional unexplored network opportunities through the Chamber of Commerce, trade fairs and group meets.
• Developed key relationships with a variety of internal underwriters, and across various disciplines (Commercial, Corporate, Farm, High Net Worth etc) to effectively meet the varying needs of our clients.
• Engaging with associated business’ further develop insight and knowledge of additional business areas such as RMS (Risk Management Services) and Financial Services.
• Lead a focus project aimed at increasing the cross selling of RMS in order to meet branch targets, and resulting in the completion of these targets within a 10 month period (missed for the last 24 months) and actively managing 2 team members as part of this.
• Supporting a joint focus project aimed at the increased cross sell of life products (Investments, Pensions, Life Insurance).
• Formed part of an MSD (Microsoft Dynamics) project team, advising stakeholders on various daily issues and challenges, and systematically feeding back to the implementation team to support improvement and refinement.
• Developing strong commercial insurance knowledge in order to support a variety of businesses verticals.
• Becoming commercially licensed across: car, home, fleet, small commercial and large commercial, farm and HNW within 12 months and continued to undertake specialist courses in D&O (Directors & Officers), Business Interruption, and Legal Expenses.
• Played a key part in helping the business move forward and develop commercial development plans.
• Helped to consistently increase GWPI revenue (£330k Year 1, £647k Year 2, £500k Year 3).

11x GCSE

x6 B (Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, History, ICT)

x5 C (English Language, English Literature, Spanish, RE, Statistics)