Career Highlights
Manley Hopkinson has had a colourful career. A former inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Marine Police, he had his own boat building and servicing company in the Far East, twice served as an officer in the Royal Navy - rejoining for the 1st Gulf War, attained a degree in Marine Engineering then worked as a Marine Surveyor world-wide before becoming a contract project manager for Granada Media, solving one of its major Year 2000 projects. Since racing around the World as a Skipper in the BT Global Challenge, and winning the first race to the Magnetic North Pole in record time, Manley has been inspiring audiences worldwide recounting his experiences and bringing the topics of leadership, "team-ship" and "self-ship" alive using the powerful metaphors to the benefit of many of the world's leading organisations.

Manley advises business leaders globally on the creation and running of high performing organisations, and was on the Board leading the transformation of the ATLAS Consortium - a consortium of EDS (now HP), Fujitsu, EADS (now Cassidean), Logica and General Dynamics delivering the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) to the UK Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence. Manley joined the board of HP Defence & Security delivering the cultural transformation program before, now, as a supplier providing them the leadership development required to become a High Performance Organisation (see notes on HPO). Manley's main strength is in creating and developing the transformational leadership behaviours needed for business and sporting teams to perform at a high level, consistently. From turning around failing teams, to creating new teams, Manley excels at enabling people to gain a deeper understanding of self and through that a better understanding of others leading to more effective business and personal relationships. Download the pdf here.....

Hewlett Packard (HP) and the ATLAS Consortium
From March 2008 until mid 2010 Manley was on the board of the ATLAS Consortium as the Director of Organisation, People and Partners, with responsibility for Marketing & Communications, HR and Organisational Effectiveness. Manley "graduated" to join the Board of HP Defence & Security (HP D&S) to deliver the Management of Change aspect of a fundamental shift in culture to enable HPD&S to become a High Performing Organisation (HPO). Manley was fully accountable in bringing about the required leadership development for the largest infrastructure project outside the USA. The overarching principle of his role is on bring the many parts of the consortium closer together; the 5 business partners, the Ministry of Defence interface (IPT), cross functional business areas and the customer- the UK Armed Forces. Bringing his wide and varied leadership and consulting experience to bear, Manley delivered the cultural change required and since January 2011, having retired from the Board, Manley now acts as an external consultant on HPO and Leadership Development. "It was an incredible opportunity. I have been advising leaders of business worldwide on how to change their own organisations, but for ATLAS and HPD&S I was an accountable part of the business. You learn so much more being on the inside and can add so much more value as a result. This is a project of huge national importance and high visibility. We needed to get this right. The responsibility was huge, but the calibre of people I worked with at ATLAS & HPD&S was truly inspiring and that brings with it very high expectations."

Business Experience
Manley was the Chief Operating Officer of the new Whyte & Mackay Boat Show at Earls Court, London. From conception to show delivery in 7 ½ months, this spectacular show was developed in response to huge industry and public demand. Creating the team to deliver a complex and international show enabled Manley to use his leadership and organisational skills to great effect in the high pressure world of event creation and management. Having helped set up the resurrection of a boat show at Earls Court, Manley moved on to the ATLAS Consortium Using his vast sailing and motor yacht experience, Manley joined Tecardy Marine as a Marine Surveyor based on the Thames, surveying boats worldwide. Manley was a contract project manager for Granada Media on their Y2K Compliance Programme, running teams based in London, Manchester and Leeds. His role developed beyond the Y2K Compliance Programme as Manley successfully led on other IT projects gathering business requirements, assessing options and presenting recommended solutions.

Manley set up Manley Marine, a marine servicing and boat building company based in Hong Kong, serving the Far East and Australasia. As an experienced and qualified marine engineer, Manley balanced the demands of leading a team of employed and contracted staff as well as maintaining a design and development capability himself, handling multiple, concurrent repair and build projects based in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Australia.