OUR FOUNDER

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Ed has over 34 years experience in the City of London.
 He has been in financial markets all of his working life - having long spells with HSBC, Handelsbanken, ING and most recently, Director of Corporate Treasury and Investment for Deutsche Postbank. Ed has also worked for four years in Singapore as Treasurer for BHF bank and specialises in Foreign Exchange, money markets and derivatives. He has a first class honours degree from the OU in maths and natural sciences. Ed is married to Susan and they have three children and four grandchildren. The idea to form WizeUp in came from first hand experience of the trials and tribulations of his own children as they moved through adolescence and into adulthood. He developed WizeUp Consultants, a not for profit company in 2011 and he decided to apply for charitable status in 2020. This was granted and WizeUp Financial Education began work in the same year.

Alan has worked in and around the paper industry for his entire career  with the majority of that time spent with Wiggins Teape. During that time Alan was responsible  for production, operational logistics, systems and applications in both the UK and Europe. He finally oversaw corporate project management as director both in the UK and Europe. 

Since retirement, his interests include family, golf, film and literature.

Ken initially worked in the public sector for the Lord Chancellor’s Department culminating in his appointment as the London County Courts and Tribunals administrator. In that role he managed all twelve of the London County Courts and six Tribunals of various jurisdictions. 

In 1990 he was appointed as the London Area Manager before becoming National Operations Director of the Legal Aid Board which, at that time, was the NDPB responsible for the administration of public funding for legal services. His staff, based in regional offices throughout England and Wales, processed a spend of £50-60m per annum. He was at the forefront of quality management initiatives including the achievement of British Standards quality accreditation for all the offices under his command and the devolvement of power to law firms to authorise their own public funding in return for meeting auditable quality standards. 

In 1998 he moved to the private sector where he ran the largest law firm in the East London / Essex area. He was responsible for all aspects of the practice including finance, personnel, facilities management and regulatory compliance until his retirement in 2016.

Derek spent his entire career working for British Telecoms (formerly GPO) which saw him qualify initially as an engineer. 

He moved onto a procurement role leading a team of pricing specialists negotiating a variety of very large supply contracts and joining the Institute of Purchasing and Supply. At this time process re-engineering was introduced and he headed up a team that delivered major cost and time savings in the installation of external work. 

Derek retired in 1998 and offered his services into the voluntary sector. Over the next ten years he was a classroom assistant in a Christchurch Primary School and a study assistant in the West Ham United Learning Centre, providing teaching backup for Years 6 and 7 on numeracy, literacy and ICT.