Saturday 30 October 2010

Dr Martin Blake as Non Executive Director for Amida


Amida and I have some very exciting news to share. Dr Martin Blake, former Head of Sustainability for the Royal Mail and Chairman of Carbon Zero Solutions, has agreed to be Amida’s Non-Executive Director. Martin has been a close support and partner to Amida over the past year and will now play an integral part in the business development.

This partnership will be highly beneficial to Amida as a sustainable development search and recruitment business for a number of reasons. The vision of Amida is to move sustainability forward globally through people, and more particularly, through facilitating talent into organisations who see the imperative of driving sustainability through their business. Martin is an influential and inspirational achievement-driven sustainability expert and visionary leader, with over 25 years practical experience, having recently deployed one of the most successful carbon management programmes in the world. His extensive knowledge of the built environment, infrastructure, transport, social and low carbon strategy is invaluable to driving this change and realising Amida’s potential.

For seven years, up until October 2010, Dr Blake led the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Teams at Royal Mail as well as designing and deploying an international award winning Carbon Management Programme to combat climate change. The Royal Mail is the largest private employer in the UK, with 175,000+ employees, 14,000 retail outlets, a fleet of 35,000 vehicles and over 30 Boeing 737’s transporting 85 million pieces of mail every day to 27 million addresses. Martin operationalised the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve, which was conceptualised by McKinsey, to produce a carbon management programme that saves £30m annually at zero net cost to the business. He defined and set measurements for carbon footprinting protocol that was recognised as a best practice model, winning the World Mail and London Liveable City awards for climate change innovation. Royal Mail has now won over 75 national and international awards for CSR since 2004 including World Mail Awards for carbon management and the Carbon Trust Standard.

One of his most notable achievements at Royal Mail was his significant contribution to the commercialisation of hydrogen fuel cell technology for use in vehicles and buildings in the postal sector including performing a competitive analysis, technological research, and designing hydrogen strategy to gain competitive advantage as market leader. This step has been influential on the vehicle industry and Martin has become recognised as an expert in hydrogen. Martin is a prolific keynote speaker on sustainability and carbon reduction at national and international conferences, events and academic institutions, which have included (this year alone): the Asia Pacific Academy for Business In Society (APABIS) in Japan, the Australian and Asia Pacific Mining Conference and the Low Carbon Fuel and Sustainability conference for Scottish Government in Edinburgh. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Business Development at both Griffith University and the University of Southern Queensland.

Prior to joining Royal Mail, after a Bachelors degree in Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Martin worked for 6 years as the Chief for Preventative Medicine for the Ministry of Health in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where he successfully designed and formulated a comprehensive, regional and integrated preventive medicine programme serving a population of approximately 250,000 people, controlling a budget of $5 million and significantly reducing death and sickness rates. Martin then spent 12 years directing community infrastructure development in Saudi Arabia for oil company KSA. He strategically planned, constructed and managed multiple state-of-the-art community infrastructure projects including hospitals, roads and universities, for a population of 30 million people, controlling a 5-year capital development budget in excess of $5 billion.

He has diverse skills in organisational change management, stakeholder engagement, and risk management with a focus on large-scale CSR initiatives. Through his incredible network and aptitude to link people and organisations, Martin has an innate ability to see trends in business and actualise solutions. He will work with the four Amida Directors on business strategy and will work closely with myself in my Sustainability Manager capacity, to ensure that Amida is as sustainable as possible.

We welcome Martin to our business and very much look forward to working with him. Cheers to a successful business partnership and a positive, sustainable future for Amida!

No comments:

Post a Comment