Mark Harrison
Mark Harrison

Alumni Spotlight: Mark Harrison

Intro

When you’ve already been working in a field for many years, what benefit does returning to education bring? For credit manager Mark Harrison, it offered an opportunity to learn more about a career he loved, and the confidence to start his own business.

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Mark left school at 16, where he started working as a cashier at a bank. During a stint working at a company called EMI in Middlesex, he was introduced the job that would come to define his future career.

No one starts out thinking they’re going to be in Credit management, you just kind of fall into it. It found me at EMI. One of my colleagues was off sick so I was asked to sit in on some credit meetings, and it just suited my talents. I liked talking to people, I was a good communicator and I was quite good with numbers.”

Credit management is usually focused on working business to business, requiring Mark to negotiate and discuss matters with his clients, including the Ministry of Defence. For twenty years, Mark worked for various credit management companies, all the while knowing that acting as an employee didn’t necessarily suit him. That’s how he found himself as a student. After undertaking the Credit Management Institute qualification, he was looking for more study opportunities.

I had a chip on my shoulder about not having been to university. I’d always wanted a degree, but it needed to be either something relevant to my work, or something just for me, like History. Then this course came along, and it just suited me.”

While most people live in London during their degree at the University of West London, Mark had recently moved to the Czech Republic, where a centralised financial service was being established across Europe.

In the past, any big company would have an accounting office in most major cities. They began to bring them all under one roof, and the one I was involved in just happened to be based in the Czech Republic. The idea was to create new synergies, bringing all the financial activities together to ensure efficiency and cost-savings across the company.”

So, Mark moved to Brno, having always wanted to work in another country. He’d split his time between the UK and the Czech Republic to complete his studies.

It sounds tiring, but it was really exciting. The job took me to all sorts of places, like Milan for instance. It was a complex job, and it all seemed to work at the time. But I was also having a lot of fun in my personal life, making friends and having a good time.”

Coming to university, Mark met many people who were as passionate about credit management as he was. He also picked up processes and knowledge that he’s still sharing with people through webinars and training in his own company today.

He emerged from UWL (then called Thames Valley University) as one of the few people in mainland Europe to have a qualification in Credit Management, which gave him the confidence to hold his own in professional settings. At the same time, Mark was growing frustrated with the corporate lifestyle, wanting instead to go beyond the scope of his work in creative or imaginative ways.

Mark realised that, with many companies going into a shared services model of finance, he was spending a lot of time teaching and training people. He saw this as an opportunity to share his experiences on a much wider scale. Very few companies had someone teaching credit management, so he was able to slowly build up his client base.

It felt instinctively like the right time. It was one of those situations where I couldn’t ask for an investment or write a business plan because there was nothing to judge it against. There wasn’t anything like this in the market, and I wanted to train people who were new to this emerging profession.”

The result was Callisto Grand, which Mark grew by grabbing every possible opportunity. He has worked with many companies, including Exxon Mobile, training credit managers and helping these places set up their new financial models.

I’ve always been blessed with an instinct, and as I got older, I realised how important it was to just get my finger out and carpe diem. At this point I was nearing fifty, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should just give it a go and at least try my hand at doing my own thing.”

Mark has no intention to retire. Instead, he wants to keep growing his practices across Europe, and begin sharing his expertise, whether in formal university settings or through the book he is currently writing. And, when he’s not doing that, he’s acting as a mentor for current UWL students!

Mark Harrison and his student mentor stood in the foyer of the University of West London

I am always proudest when something you tell someone resonates them, and they take it on board and run with it. You can’t buy that feeling. And the thing I always want to tell people is learn your trade. Be prepared to do your ten thousand hours and be humble with that.

Learning starts when you’re ready to admit you don’t know what you don’t know. Then, as you move forward and advance your career, it’s important to just be yourself. Don’t try to be someone that you’re not.”

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