Tim Barnes

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Tim has managed large and small organisations in the private and public sectors ranging from universities to venture capital firms. He has led start-up companies, charities, political campaigns and public bodies.

He is the CEO of the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CfE), the UK's largest charity supporting and understanding entrepreneurs. CFE has led research on topics from incubators and accelerators in the UK to university spinouts and helping prisoners become entrepreneurs. The charity also co-ordinates Global Entrepreneurship Week in the UK.

An entrepreneur himself, Tim established an accelerator and incubator for GovTech businesses in 2016. As Head of UCL Enterprise Operations since 2011, Tim was responsible for the University’s outward-facing business engagement activities. He led UCL's centre for entrepreneurship from its founding in 2007 and built it into one of the largest such activities in the world. He has managed stakeholders from senior academic faculty and government ministers to students and high-level business leaders and been successful in navigating their respective needs and working styles.

Prior to 2007, Tim spent six years running his own business, which helped universities and large corporations to spin-out high technology companies. Tim’s background experience includes working as an investment manager at a pan-European investment firm focussed on early-stage technology ventures and as a management consultant at one of the world’s largest professional services firms.

In 2010 Tim founded the globally successful Citrus Saturday, a non-profit enterprise driving entrepreneurial ambition in school-age children that now runs in fourteen countries. He is currently Deputy Chairman of Capital Enterprise, a Trustee of the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs (NACUE) and a Non-Executive Director of Exemplas, a consultancy and programme delivery company. He graduated from UCL in 1997 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2014 was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion for life.