Rob WirszyczHe chairs growing companies and mentors the people who run them.

Rob grew up in Devon, the son of a Polish father who had fought with the Free Polish Army. He went to Exeter University to train as a primary school teacher in art, and ended up as president of the student union.

A meeting with the college principal, who had advised Kenya’s education minister after independence, sent him to Kenya as a volunteer kindergarten teacher. He says it was the best preparation for business he could have had: “Young children are just like dealing with senior executives. They don’t listen, they argue all the time.”

He spent a year writing copy for an advertising agency in Hong Kong, then moved to Japan. He taught English across the country and became head of the Lower School at an international school, before going back to advertising as a creative director. It was in Japan that he bought his first computer, an Apple IIc, and taught himself to touch type.

Back in Britain he joined Callhaven, one of the fastest-growing resellers of Apple and Sun systems, as a trainer in a team of four or five. He left as its marketing director.

For most of his career Rob has worked as a non-executive chairman, adviser and mentor, with companies that range from start-ups to publicly quoted businesses. He has backed some of them with his own money too. His strengths are strategy and marketing, with a knack for turnarounds, and he knows e-commerce, logistics, cloud software, insurance and consumer electronics from the inside.

He has chaired Bluesource for many years, and he was group chairman of Six by Nico, the restaurant group built on fixed-price, six-course tasting menus that change every six weeks. He sits on the boards of BLOK and ARuVR, and his earlier boards include Agena, Datrix, Celaton, iMimobile, Maistro and the business that became TPXimpact.

He was a founding member of ScaleUp Group, the network of experienced operators that helps companies grow into global champions.

His view of his own path is generous. He says he may have jumped around a lot, “but on the plus side, that’s allowed me to have a lot of different experiences and learning which I’ve been able to transfer.”

Rob joined the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the City livery company for the IT industry, while he was at the CSSA. He sees it as the philanthropic side of the industry, a place to ask what technology can do as a force for good. He chaired its Entrepreneur Panel and went on to serve as Master.

His year as Master was built around social value. Where ESG manages the downside, he argues, social value is the positive side of the same coin, to be grown alongside financial value. As Past Master he signed up fifteen companies to promote and fund the Lord Mayor’s growth events at the Mansion House. He is now a director of the Company’s charity.

He has been a Visiting Senior Fellow at London business schools, and he is a fellow of the RSA and the BCS.

Rob was a director of Group Partners for several years, and today he is part of its Expert Network. He is also one of the first readers of John Caswell’s book, It’s All In Our Imagination.