Ross James
Biography
Ross James’s early career was spent developing, launching and expanding a range of products and services across a number of consumer industries. Ross commenced his career at Unilever and worked for companies as diverse as Odeon Cinemas, Reckitt and Colman and Littlewoods. Ross then joined a small video on demand dot.com, obtained VC funding and learnt the hard lessons of the dot.com boom and bust.
Ross moved to the public sector in 2002, initially providing government department consultancy through the Central Office of Information and then joining the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to establish the Insight team ensuring that user centred design and agile working sits at the heart of DWP policy and service design. Ross subsequently assumed policy responsibility for all working age employment policies in the Department and was then asked to lead labour market policy for Universal Credit helping to ensure that Universal Credit gets more people into work (and earning more) than Jobseekers Allowance.
Ross lives in Cheltenham and London with his partner and their needy Whippet.
Previous roles in government
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Corporate Services Director