Dr. Barrie Hopson, Chairman

Barrie has a long history of involvement in the areas of career development, lifelong learning and devising innovative ways of learning. Previously Barrie established the Counselling and Career Development Unit at Leeds University in 1976 and subsequently went on to found Lifeskills International - an original co-owner of AIM. He has written 39 books including the best selling "12 Steps to Success Through Service", "Lifeskills Teaching Programmes" and "Build Your Own Rainbow", which are still widely used by guidance practitioners and teachers. His latest is “The Rainbow Years: The Pluses of Being 50+” and in October 2009, “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career” will be published.

Barrie has worked widely as a consultant to industrial and educational organisations in the UK, USA, Asia and Europe. He was responsible for setting up the first career counselling service in British industry in 1970 (at ICI) and has since helped a number of organisations in different countries to set up management and employee development systems. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the British Institute of Management.

Richard Etheridge, Technical Director

Richard is Axia Interactive Media's Technical Services Director and the brains behind the development of NOW.net as a modular platform. He plays an instrumental role in scoping project requirements from a client's perspective and then acting as a technical interface by interpreting these for the development team. Richard continues to lead the development of the NOW.net platform ensuring that core features of the platform meet existing customer needs and those of our growing client base.  He considers our clients to be members of the NOW.net family, where we embrace open source principles, allowing all family members to benefit from continued development requested by new and existing clients.Richard is increasing involved in more complex delivery models where data is exchanged between disparate systems from our clients and the solutions we delivery using NOW.net.  Recent projects have included importing data from college MIS systems, transforming the data and then exporting for other systems and the development of web services both for allowing data to be extracted from other service providers and making data available from within the core platform to other service providers.

Richard’s philosophy is always build code once in a generic way that allows it to be used many times in different ways by the NOW.net family.He has a customer service background, but he returned to university as a mature student where he was awarded a BSc (Hons) in Information Systems for Business.  He believes this life experience provides both the technical knowledge and customer focus that is critical to the successful delivery of complex solutions for our clients.

< Back

Chris Peat OBE, Customer Services Director

Chris was awarded the OBE in 2002 in recognition of his services to Adult Learning in Leeds. Since joining the company, he has built on his extensive experience of adult learning to ensure that all Axia Interactive Media’s competency review systems reflect the highest standards of assessment practice.Chris has spoken at conferences in the UK, in Europe and in Canada about the Company’s pioneering Now.net platform and the way it can be adapted to meet the requirements of learning institutions and professional bodies. He is also actively involved in the delivery of learning and assessment. He is an NOCN Approved Internal Verifier as well as Chairing the governing body of a large High School.

Bob Mozley, Non-Executive Director

Bob is responsible for the roll-out of AIM's NVQ assessment platforms, Bob has a background in Commercial roles at senior level in both the Public and Private sectors. This includes both Contract and Project management (incorporating large scale PFI programmes), the development of in-house NVQ programmes, and the delivery of a wide range of training and support systems.

Peter Wells, Non-Executive Director

Peter has 30 years experience in technology management including 15 years operating at board level. He has been responsible for the rollout of a new credit card management system to 52 countries for a major US bank, the restructuring and outsourcing of Anglian Waters' Technology organisation, including the transfer of 300 staff to CSC, and while employed by EDS, was responsible for all the Inland Revenue e-Business strategy including self assessment.

Paul Anthony Chubb, Company Secretary

Paul and his wife (Alison) are self-employed as the "Boundary Partnership" working in their learning and skills consultancy which they established in May 2005. Prior to this Paul had a long history in the careers business for young people and adults, including leading the development of the Guidance Enterprises Group of companies (as its Chief Executive) for the 11 years up to 2005. Paul became a Fellow of the Institute of Directors in 1998.For many years Paul has been (and remains) an active contributor to the national Information, Advice & Guidance scene, including being President of the Institute of Career(s) Guidance in 1991-2. He also served as a Director of the Careers Service National Association and of the Guidance Accreditation Board (involved directly in establishing the first quality standards for guidance in learning and work). In addition Paul is a Director of Careers England (the national trade association of careers companies).