Chris Jones
Director General and Chief Executive Officer, City & Guilds
City & Guilds is the largest vocational education organisation, with approximately 1.8 million people currently working towards a City & Guilds qualification in the UK and Ireland.
With over 130 years heritage and expertise, City & Guilds aims to inspire young people to realise their career aspirations and is leading a new kind of talent revolution to ensure the workforce of tomorrow has the right training to succeed and lead in tomorrow’s fast paced economy.
Chris Jones’s role is to set the strategic direction of the Group. He also chairs the Management Board. Chris comes from a strong commercial background, and so sees his primary role as ensuring that City & Guilds retains its position as market leader and continues to grow in today’s global, high-tech economy.
Since joining in 2008, he has led City & Guilds to significantly grow its surplus – which enables further investment in the organisation to benefit its learners. And, it is this 130 year track-record of benefiting learners that Chris feels so passionate about. He feels he is the custodian of a great heritage of helping people get the skills they need to unleash their talents and achieve their full potential.
Chris is also keen for the Group to keep innovating, so that City & Guilds can lead a new kind of talent revolution, to capture the imagination of people and inspire them to take control of their futures for personal and economic growth.
Chris plays a prominent role in driving the national skills agenda – something he has personal experience of as he followed the vocational education path himself. After a year of university, he decided to leave to take a practical marketing and sales course, which set the foundation for his career.
Before joining City & Guilds, Chris held several senior management positions in publishing and education. In his former post, he transformed Harcourt Education International, implementing a customer-centred vision to grow revenue. Chris also served as Senior Vice President at LexisNexis Risk Management Group and Group Director at Financial Times Electronic Publishing.
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