Bright and early on a Tuesday morning at the end of last month, Eileen and I met for coffee with Andrew Mullaney, who is Dudley’s first ever Business Connector, seconded from Lloyds Bank to Business in the Community’s Business Connectors programme.

The Business in the Community website says: “Business Connectors are talented individuals seconded from business, trained by Business in the Community and placed in communities of greatest need to build partnerships that tackle local issues.” 

I think we’ve struck gold here in Dudley because Andrew is not only talented, and experienced in business, but also hugely passionate about Dudley and driven by a mission to make a sustainable, lasting difference in the work that he does.

In his first five weeks in his new role Andrew had already made an astonishing number of connections and was working incredibly energetically as a network weaver (see video below), actively creating connections between people and organisations who hadn’t previously known about each other, or worked together.

In the weeks since we met him, Andrew has been just brilliant at connecting us with helpful people and organisations, and has very kindly been promoting Dudley Volunteer Centre and Dudley CVS in all sorts of things he’s been involved in. If you want to use and grow your networks to make positive change in Dudley I’d recommend arranging to meet Andrew for a coffee. Some great connections are guaranteed!

You can connect with Andrew on twitter @dudleyconnector, by email andrew.mullaney@bitcconnect.org or give him a call on 07834945827.

For more on network weaving, check out June Holley’s work, and the video below.