Tom started his career over 40 years ago in IT for British Aerospace and other leading private sector brands like ICI, Allied Irish Bank and Coca Cola. Tom was promoted and his responsibilities grew to include HR, Finance, IT, Communications, Customer Service, Facilities and Procurement in various organisations. Tom has led the creation and operation of specialist Shared Services teams in the UK including Network Rail, 5 County Police Forces and several Local Authorities across the UK. Leading large transformation programmes in multiple sectors to drive down cost of back-office operations thereby creating more funding for front line services has been a key feature of Tom’s most recent work. Tom joined Dixons in 2023 as Executive Director: Business Services and over his first 18 months created a Business Services team to deliver many of our central shared services processes in line with best practice providing a high quality, standardised service to all Academies and Central Functions within the Trust. This has resulted in significant measured performance improvements in all parts of Business Services, high level of satisfaction with Principals in our 17 academies and College, as well as saving £1.154m in cashable savings with a payback period of under 2 years.