Ambition with Impact
In this episode of Management Meets, Katie Calvert-Jones speaks with Kelvin Hughes - BSc Business 2010 alumnus and founder of Picanto Partners, a consultancy helping social enterprises and mission-driven organisations scale their impact. Kelvin shares his career journey from the corporate world at Morgan Stanley, Nestlé and Unilever to leading a sanitation social enterprise in Ghana and launching his own consultancy focused on social impact.
The conversation explores the challenges of measuring social value, the realities of implementing strategy in mission-driven organisations, and Kelvin’s ambitious vision to introduce mergers and acquisitions thinking to the charity and social enterprise sector.
Along the way, Kelvin reflects on lessons learned from working internationally, the importance of asking questions and taking initiative, and why ambition sometimes means pursuing ideas that feel a little terrifying.
Creators and Guests
Host
Katie Calvert-Jones
Passionate advocate of the value a strong and engaged community can bring, and the far-reaching results that can be achieved. Loves hearing, sharing, and joining-up individual stories between professionals to enable ongoing learning and success.
Producer
Becky Toogood
Becky Toogood is the Alumni Engagement Communications Officer for the University of Bath, School of Management. With a first-class degree in journalism and a marketing background, Becky has experience in digital, print and multimedia communications. Working in higher education, Becky likes to showcase those leading innovation in their respective areas to celebrate success in the community, whilst inspiring others.
Guest
Kelvin Hughes
Kelvin started a business degree at Bath almost 20 years ago and has fond memories of living at Solsbury Court, rugby initiation and frisbee by the lake. He started his career in consumer goods after internships in banking, consumer goods and consultancy whilst at Bath. There was then an opportunity to become a social intraprenuer at Unilever, part of a team starting new purpose driven businesses around the world. He then ran an education charity, then a social enterprise and now runs Picanto Partners, an advisory firm helping social enterprises and charities implement strategy. As a client, Kelvin grew frustrated with the traditional consulting model and founded Picanto Partners to offer advisory services with a payments by results model. Picanto also makes small investments in purpose driven businesses and has recently expanded into mergers, acquisition and partnership support for both charities and social enterprises.
