Cherry Professional

As an introduction can you give us a potted history on you and your company please?
I'm a qualified Chartered Accountant and I've worked in Nottingham since qualification because it's a good vibrant city to work in. I trained with Price Waterhouse then worked for East Midlands Electricity, Powergen and Pendragon and currently work as the Finance & Operations Director of Nottingham Contemporary. Nottingham Contemporary is a charitable trust and was set up to improve the international art offering in Nottingham. The idea is that it brings art to Nottingham that wouldn't have otherwise been shown in the city and it is part of the Nottingham City Council's initiative to improve the City as a centre of cultural excellence.

What are the major challenges facing your business this year?
Nottingham Contemporary is a relatively young organisation that was established in 2006 but has been operating a £20m building for the last 18 months so it is a relatively new organisation. It's grown from 1 employer to currently just over 50 although many of those are part time so many of the challenges are still about getting to work together better, organisational development and we are now at a point where we can start to look at how we can be more efficient in what we do.

How do you think the East Midlands is fairing as a region compared to the UK as a whole?
I'm a strong supporter of the East Midlands as a region which is why I have lived in this city for 30 years. Disappointingly there is no football representation in the Premier League and we're not doing so well either in the Rugby unless you go to Leicester Tigers and in terms of business I have seen a lot of Head Office moves away from the city as well as companies downsizing which is unfortunate and obviously reduces the market place but there are lots of up and coming small innovative software type companies which we need to encourage to come to the region and develop new opportunities for the people that live here.

What does your typical day look like?
I don't really necessarily have a typical day, partly you look at the building, you look at the finances, look at what the team is up to, I spend a lot the time managing the team and helping them with what they need to do and try and anticipate what the issues are we've got ahead so that we can deal with these as effectively as we can.

What do like to do outside of work / what makes you tick?
I have actually studied photography for the last 6 years, most recently at Nottingham Trent University and previous to that at Castle College so I've actually spent quite a bit of time doing that and more recently I am into cycling and doing a bit of gardening which my mother is horrified with!

If you hadn't followed your current career path what would you have done?
Obviously I would of quite liked to of been a well known professional photographer but that's a very competitive job and something that's quite difficult to get into. If I wasn't going to go to University I was actually going to go to printing school which equally would have been quite difficult because that's seen huge technological change so I don't know how that may have worked out.

Anything else you'd like to tell us or comment on?
I think you should all come and visit the Nottingham Contemporary if you have not been and enjoy the art that we have on offer, if you haven't been look at the website first to get an idea of what we do.