Former Director General CBI, Lord Digby Jones is also former Minister of State for Trade & Investment. During his 15 months in Ministerial office he made 45 overseas visits, travelling to 31 different countries and meeting with the world’s top business leaders and politicians. He changed the way that UK Trade & Investment was perceived in delivering a record year for inward investment and expanded the UK’s presence in all of the major international markets.

Digby served as Director-General of the CBI, the Confederation of British Industry, the UK’s ‘Voice of Business’, from 1 January 2000 to 30 June 2006 where he regularly visited businesses in the UK and worldwide – taking their views back to those who make the rules. During his appointment he took the British business message to 70 different countries, internationalising the organisation and opening CBI offices in Washington DC and Beijing..

Following his departure from the CBI he held a number of senior corporate advisory positions. He has served as the UK’s Skills Envoy, campaigning for both private and public sector employers to raise the level of skills of all of their employees to Level Two by 2010.

Digby Jones accepted a lifetime peerage in the House of Lords where he now sits on the cross benches and is known as Lord Jones of Birmingham. Now, in addition to his role as an active cross-bencher in the House of Lords he serves as Chairman of the International Business Advisory Board at HSBC, Chairman of Triumph Motorcycles Limited, and is Corporate Ambassador for Jaguar Cars and JCB. He is an advisor in several other roles, widening his vision of promoting socially inclusive wealth creation. In addition, he is an erudite and inspirational speaker and presenter at a wide range of corporate events.

“Dear Sir Digby
This is a brief note to thank you for your inspiring delivery at last week’s seminar at Wolverhampton University – it was first rate and just what was required. I have analysed the feedback from the seminar and 97% of the audience felt that it exceeded their expectations – high praise indeed from the University staff ( the other 3% stated that it met their expectations in full). The entire seminar programme has been a huge success and attracted a great deal of interest from other Universities. The challenge for Wolverhampton is how to better it for next year!

Once again, many thanks for your input – it was greatly appreciated, delivered to an exceptional standard and extremely well received by the audience. The University could not have asked for any more.”

Mick Gernon, Principal Advisor (Education), KPMG LLP

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