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Charity Trustees
Jim Grimmer
Jim worked at Grampian Police for 20 years including roles in serious crime and major incident investigation. In 2005, he was awarded the ‘Iraq Reconstruction Medal’ following a year located in the Maysan Province of Iraq, mentoring the new Iraqi Police Service on behalf of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He has also worked for a further 20 years in business development, general management and director roles within the oil and gas sector in his home city of Aberdeen.
In 2018, Jim founded the community interest company and social enterprise P3 Business Care to bring personal & proactive care to employees in the 9-5 corporate sector, working in partnership with the employer. Jim was a co-founder of The Business Connection and is a graduate of Robert Gordon University (MCIPD) and Hillsong International Leadership College in Sydney (Cert IV Ministry). He is a former Street Pastor and an active member of Kings Church Aberdeen, a Director of King's Community Foundation, and an Accredited Minister with AoG (Assemblies of God). Jim is also the AOG GB Business Lead for Chaplaincy and volunteers one morning a week for the Friends of Anchor cancer charity in Aberdeen. He is married to Ashlyn, who serves in a pastoral care role at church and Friends of Anchor.
Ian Ferguson
Ian is the Senior Leader in Well Design and Construction for Shell UK. He is General Manager of Shell’s Wells operations in the UK & Norway and a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of The Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
Ian is a trustee of Catalyst Vineyard church, Aberdeen and is married to Lucy with four children.
Martyn Link
Martyn is an experienced purpose-driven leader, passionate about enabling organizations to prepare for, and adapt to, the biggest challenges of our time. He currently works in a consultancy role helping major corporate business with strategy and resilience. Martyn co-founded the Business Connection in 2014.
Prior to this Martyn spent 11 years at the global engineering giant Wood Plc, where he was the Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for corporate strategy, organizational design and leading the pivot towards the energy transition and decarbonization. He is a scientist by training and has two degrees from Edinburgh University and is currently undertaking an MBA. He started his career at the leading consulting company, Wood Mackenzie where he focused on corporate strategy and competitive intelligence.
Martyn lives near Dundee, is a member of Central Baptist Church and is married with three teenage children.
Diana Samulewicz
Diana joined the Board of The Business Connection as a charity trustee in 2022.
Diana is an ICF Accredited, ACC Coach and certified Career Coach with 15+ years of HR/Talent Management background gained in the UK, China, UAE and Poland. She has developed a broad perspective through international experience, gained across industries (pharmaceutical, energy, automotive, recruitment, academia, not-for profit) and sizes of organisations (from a start-up at growth stage, through medium size, to matrixed Fortune 500).
Diana attends King's Church Aberdeen and is married with two children.
Advisory Board
Tony Hodges, City Vision
As a Christian businessman, Tony moved in 2014 from being CEO with day to day responsibilities for the company he had started in 1996, to becoming its Chairman. It had grown to 100 people on 3 continents supporting blue-chip employers and touched some 20 million people around the world each year to a greater or lesser extent.
Increasingly though, after memorising and meditating on the Sermon on the Mount, he found himself asking what a city would look like if the Kingdom of God came fully. He wasn't satisfied with his answers and started to pray more and research. He then added the further question of why the Christian business community in each city was so fragmented. In addition, he did not understand why Christian leaders in cities only appeared to have superficial relationships with each other when Christ's primary command was to display love for one another. He observed that not only did Christian leaders generally not have close links with each other, they did not have close links with the Christian business community in their city either.
This all led to reflecting on what might happen if the Christian business community and the church leader community came together. He started to pray more, discuss and research, meeting some 300 Christian business people and Church leaders around the UK in an 18 month period.
City Vision has come into being as an enabling agency to help the business people of peace and the church leaders of peace in a city to find new ways of working together to bless their city. The lessons from Tony's working life of engaging with large organisations, some employing 500,000 people, seem to fit well with the challenges of city size transformation. The encouragement he has received has satisfied him that God is with us in this endeavour to bring His people together. See CITY VISION
Ken Janke, City Table USA
Ken Janke believes that life is enhanced through quality relationships. He works to resource people as change agents and to support people in their process of personal growth. He believes that collaboration fuels change, and that it works to facilitate opportunities for co-creating and networking. He creates space for transformational initiatives to incubate.
Ken has worked in both the corporate for-profit and the non-profit sector for 30 years. He is the former Director of Programmes and Partnerships for Global Advance located in Texas, USA. See GLOBAL ADVANCE
In 2022, Ken, along with his ministry partner Jon Petersen, author of Unveiled, created City Table. At its core, a city is an ecosystem of relationships. Jesus has much to teach us in the 21st century about healing the interactive ecosystem existing between civic, cultural, church, and marketplace leaders. It starts with our own personal transformation, flows into the transformation of our community of family and friends, then spreads into our workplace and neighbourhoods.
Jon and Ken have catalysed transformational movements in numerous global cities for decades. They have a passion to ignite “hungry hearts” with the joy of becoming transformational people.
The City Table is not an organisation to “join”; but a tribe of collaborative leaders whose hearts have been knit together to seek for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. See CITY TABLE
Kieran Turner, Evangelical Alliance
Kieran joined the Evangelical Alliance Scotland team in 2012. Prior to this, he worked for MSPs at the Scottish parliament for three years, with spells in both Edinburgh and Inverness. Before this, he spent a number of years working in youth and community work in the housing estates of his native Glasgow.
Kieran helps the Evangelical Alliance connect with politicians in Holyrood and local government, connects with national and local media, and also provides support and encouragement to churches, organisations and individual Christians trying to engage with wider Scottish society. See EAUK
In May 2022 Kieran was elected as Labour Councillor for Glasgow City East Centre Ward
Ros Loaker, Transform Work UK
Ros Loaker is CEO of Transform Work UK. Ros has been involved with workplace ministry since 2003, supporting and growing leaders of Christian Workplace Groups across the professions, industry, and commerce.
Her passion is to see Christians thrive, to engage with their communities, and be a positive influence there… and for many of us, our communities are our workplaces. Her personal approach has been valued by many workplace groups. Transform Work UK
Colin Stewart, former MD of Citi Bank, Edinburgh
Colin Stewart was Managing Director and the Country Head of Citi in Scotland. Colin has worked across the Capital Markets business, FX, Derivatives, Risk, Corporate Bank, and Citi Transaction Services. He was responsible for all Citi activity for Scotland, employing close to 500 people.
Colin was instrumental in growing Citi's Securities and Fund Services business, with Edinburgh now being a Centre of Excellence of Funds Administration. He retired in 2022 and continues to serve on the career-ready board (Scotland) and is a member of the advisory board of the Adam Smith Business School. He has served on the board of Scottish Financial Enterprise and was Chairman of the Scottish Enterprise Advisory Board
Testimonials
"I think it is an excellent initiative - and I commend everyone involved. Aberdeen can be a pretty tough business environment at the moment and this support can only be beneficial.
I always receive great nuggets of information from either the people attending or the monthly speaker. I have also made some good connections and friends.
Very welcoming and friendly. The monthly breakfasts in particular have been very informative and relevant.
The Business Connection, Scottish charity number SC045163 is the parent charity of the Thrive Scotland network
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