I am Ken Charman, a recently retired businessman who lives in North Devon, England. I was born in Dagenham and grew up in Hornchurch, which is Essex or East London (take your pick). I try to sound clever but it’s obvious I never really listened to my teachers. I failed my A levels and left school with no qualifications in Maths, Sciences or Languages. I eventually got into a third rate University (Bradford) to study History and Politics. I graduated in 1979 just in time for Margaret Thatcher to launch her famous recession. I went to live back home and worked in Tilbury docks and then the Ford factory at Dagenham with 40,000 other people. I broke into the easy life of white collar professional at 26 working for 3M. I rose rapidly and in 1987 I left and set up my first business. I have been involved in start ups ever since, usually selling high ticket enterprise software. I have experienced trade sales, an IPO and an orderly winding up. I made money and lost money but not all of it. From 2006-2010 I was CEO of a business wargaming start up based in the Department of War Studies at KCL. When I sold this to Deloitte I did an MSc at Oxford University in Major Projects. From 2012-2023 I worked at Unilever, firstly as an advisor and then from 2018 until retirement, as the CEO of a tech start up based on a unique software system Unilever had developed for managing pay for its global workforce. Along this long and winding road I have maintained an academic interest as a visiting fellow at KCL and Newcastle University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I have worked in sales, marketing, development and been a country manager, region manager, director and CEO. Although I am retired, I am the CEO of a Community Interest Company that I set up (and funded) to build a plane with students at our local state further education college. I am the political agent for our pub landlord who stood in the last General Election and will stand again in the next one. This time we will send our leaflets to the right constituency and might not lose the deposit. I have led a varied life and lug around a huge sea chest of stories. When I entered the student writing competition at Oxford I got a runner’s up commendation from the judges who said they had “never thought of autobiography as a category of comic fiction”. Vanity persuaded me to accept their praise but – it isn’t fiction.
