After missing most of my last year of Secondary School, due to injuries suffered as a passenger in a fatal car accident (which put paid to my professional sportsman ambitions), a real hurdle had to be faced in redressing resultant educational deficit, in order to develop a professional career.
A further hurdle to this professional career development, was the pressure from my blue-collar parents to follow in the footsteps of my father, who had been a Fleet Air Arm technician working on British Navy Aircraft Carriers, and subsequently worked as a cable jointer for MANWEB (outdoor big electrics).
Despite these hurdles, I did go on to qualify as a Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) in the North West of England, starting with small and medium-sized Chartered Accountancy firms, before joining Grant Thornton International in Manchester as an audit senior.
More managerial posts followed, when qualified, in both industry and in accounting practice, before being encouraged by a partner in firm of Chartered Accountants in Manchester (who did part-time teaching on ACCA at Manchester Metropolitan University on ACCA Qualification), to also consider engaging in part-time teaching.
Part-time, then full-time accountancy teaching (AAT, CIMA, ACCA and ACCA accredited degree programs) and practising as an ACCA in the UK ensued, before to a large extent carrying out full-time accountancy teaching (ACCA, CIMA, and degree programs) overseas (Eastern Europe, Central and Far East Asia, and USA). This included teaching: Big 5 (then 4) audit firm and Moore Stephens International accountancy trainees, plus: BP, Shell and Ford Motor Company staff. I also qualified while working in the USA as a Federal and Oregon State tax professional. This culminated in setting up my own company – being the first ACCA and AAT approved learning provider in the Philippines – teaching African and Filipino students.
The seeds of moving eventually into teaching, I believe, commenced through an opportunity I was offered and took, in my mid- twenties, to experience teaching maths and carrying out football coaching in a remote African village school in Botswana.
