New chairman of chamber board
Black Country Chamber of Commerce has continued with its strategic changes with the appointment of a new chairman of its board of directors.
Bankie Williams was previously managing director of HomeServe and group managing director for a Black Country family-owned print group.
The creation of this new non-executive role see the roles of the president and chairman split into two separate positions.
The role of the president will be to deal with events, press and policy, whilst the chairman will be more inward facing, with a focus on helping to transform the commercial approach of the chamber, lead a comprehensive governance review and develop a modern, business-focused board.
During his almost 20 years military service, Mr Williams served with a variety of British Army units.
He has completed both an MBA and MA, as well as attending business management programmes at Harvard Business School and Stanford Research International and a programme at The International Graduate School of Management in Geneva.
Over the years, he has maintained strong connections to the local business community working with organisations that include People Solutions Group (formerly First Personnel), Thomas Dudley and the chamber itself.
He has a proven track record for improving business performance across a variety of sectors.
“I am delighted to have been appointed chaiman and amongst my first priorities will be to review how effective we are in servicing, meeting and supporting the needs of the executive leadership team at the chamber to deliver strategic objectives that support our members moving forwards. My hope is that as a result of our collective actions, we can ensure that the Black Country Chamber of Commerce is a real centre of excellence both locally and nationally," he said.
Chamber chief executive Corin Crane said: “We are excited to have Bankie working with us; he has a wealth of experience and expertise which he will be bringing to this new role. We all have positive ambitions for the chamber moving forwards and this role will help support our fantastic board to facilitate the chamber to achieve these.
“As a chamber we are changing, and have developed a vision to become more modern and easily accessible to local civic businesses so they can access the support they need to thrive. To achieve this aim we are have looked at our governance structure and identified a gap, which has now been filled by this new chairman role.”
The new appointment comes quickly after the success of the inaugural Black Country Business Festival.
