At its summer meeting, the EFEC Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) reviewed EFEC’s post-pandemic recovery and progress with EFEC’s exciting plans for future growth.
The SAB me role is to guide EFEC in its strategy and assist in routes to markets old and new. The members have been chosen for their high profiles of achievement, networks and business acumen.
They are:
Steve Frampton – former President of the Association of Colleges and current Further Education Low Carbon Commissioner for England.
Jeff Greenidge – distinguished coach and mentor, former Diversity Director of the national Education and Training Foundation.
Andrew Imms – partner in GBA Logistics, entrepreneur and automotive industries expert.
Joseph Zhao – land economist, Cambridge graduate and chair of the Cambridge Chinese Migration Studies Group
The SAB considered the presentation by EFEC executives. CSO Andrew Thomson outlined progress with the three main strands of the EFREC business innovation services.
The first area is assisting UK companies seeking opportunities for working with Chinese partners. The current projects are in the fields of low carbon, life sciences, logistics, online training and aviation.
The second focus is on brining the EU Futures BY Design Project to the UK, to help businesses save time and increase cash flow through better use of data and digital systems.
And then there is the offer of support for ‘Into the UK’, helping Chinese companies wanting to develop in the UK markets.
Paul Beashel, EFEC founder and director, then guided the Sab through the successful launch of the CognateUK (CUK) suite of services for Chinese students in the UK.
These cover the whole journey from applying for places in schools and universities and academic support, through to living the UK, careers and getting jobs in the UK. With the successful start, now is the drive to expand the number of clients.
Paul also described the work taking off again with EFEC’s education and training study tours, with the recent successful fact-finding tour organised for PPMG to the UK and EU showing what can be achieved.
This set the scene for EFEC CEO Lily Lin to outline her vision for the future for EFEC as it builds on its strengths in these areas, growing the team in both countries and move becoming to a fully formed, agile international business brand.
Reflecting on the pandemic period, when EFEC worked tirelessly to reflect, review, redesign, restructure the post pandemic business model, Lily proclaimed it was now time to ‘rise and shine!’
Her message fired the imagination of the SAB and many good ideas were forthcoming, building momentum t-for them to assist EFEC over the coming year as these well-planted business seeds coming more and more to fruition.