Spotlight Interview: Mark Huxley
Meet the Timegiver: Mark Huxley, Master of the Company of Entrepreneurs, NED & self-confessed insurance geek.
We’re delighted to introduce Mark Huxley as one of our valued time-givers. In this interview, Mark tells us about why he’s offering his expertise, which he’s built over nearly five decades of business experience, in support of TGN.
Mark, please tell us a bit about your background, career path and areas of expertise.
One way or another my whole career (about 47 years!) has revolved around the iconic Lloyds building and the insurance market. I’m a self-confessed insurance geek and after around 20 years working from within the insurance market, I left (it was around the late 90’s) to start my own business – something I’d always wanted to do.
Founding this business enabled me to pioneer a new management service line in the UK around insurance claims handling. While the City of London has always been my much-loved back yard, I deliberately set my first venture up in Stoke-on Trent. There used to be an active insurance community which had drifted away from the city and I wanted to get that community re-energised. While I’m not involved in that business anymore, I’m proud to say we met those original aims and the company is still going strong today, employing around 1000 people.
Over the course of my career, I’ve done a lot of work in transformation and business change and I’ve since used that to support many different types of businesses to grow and evolve. I’m definitely somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum, so I like to think that I bring something out of the norm and different to the corporate mindset – I understand entrepreneurs and can help them with a lot of the common challenges they face.
I actually retired in 2017, but it lasted all of 6 weeks before my brain started to itch and I needed to exercise my curiosity and get into something new! This is when I decided to start using my experience more to support others. I think a lot of what defines philanthropy is using the skills and knowledge you acquire in your career to assist those under-supported communities and this was a great way to do that.
I’ve always done that to some degree, but ‘retirement’ in my eyes was just an opportunity to keep exploring the business world and to blend philanthropy with light commercial skills, to benefit entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses.
My family have actually been merchants in the City for hundreds of years – in fact, there’s a plaque somewhere commemorated to my distant relative, Sir George Huxley, dating back to the 17th Century, so serving the City is definitely something that’s in my blood. So, when I was offered a role at the Company of Entrepreneurs, it seemed a great fit.
After progressing through various positions, I am now Master of the Company of Entrepreneurs. I’m also NED at three companies and hold various advisory roles where I enjoy doing pro bono mentoring and advising for aspirational businesses.
How and why did you come to be involved with Time to Give Network?
I first met Andrew Kaufmann back in February 2024 due to our mutual connection with the Lord Mayor of London, Michael Mainelli. Back then TGN was just a proposition that Andrew was sounding out with a few people and I was one of them.
Giving back is something that is so central to my identity - I like doing good things for nice people, plus I’m a social animal and feel that it never hurts to talk to people and share your advice.
While I can give my time for free, I also know that my knowledge is worth something. When I spoke with Andrew, what really struck me was that through this initiative, I could achieve some financial philanthropy too – my time is of value, but I don’t need the money to come to me. So why not use that to raise money for a charity.
I was on board straight away and put my hand up to be a poster boy for TGN. Also, I have a charity that is, for person reasons, very dear to me. If, out the back of this, I can raise some money and awareness for that charity, it would mean a lot to me and to them. It’s an educational charity and at this time of financial fragility, funds are much needed, otherwise their students are at risk and we lose the opportunity to support them.
Plus, if I can encourage others to get on board with TGN, it could benefit a range of other charities, which would be fantastic. So, basically it seemed like a no-brainer to me – a good, tangible and pragmatic piece of philanthropy.
What would you say to anybody else who is reading this and thinks they might want to get involved?
I’d say don’t undervalue the personal power you have – we all suffer imposter syndrome at some point, but if Andrew is approaching you, or if you have a particular area of expertise or connections to offer, then you can provide value to this network. I think of the story of Picasso talking to a journalist who asked him to draw a sketch on a napkin. The journalist marvelled at how it only took Picasso seconds to produce, but Picasso replied “No, it took me a lifetime to learn the skills to produce that sketch in a matter of seconds”. The morale of the story is, the value isn’t about the amount of time you give, it’s about the years of knowledge that you can impart in the allocated amount of time you give.
Being a timegiver is also a way that you can overcome the ‘why would they pay me?’ question that you might ask yourself. You will only get asked to give your time to those who value it and will pay for it, but you don’t have the discomfort of asking for money for yourself – you know that it goes straight to a good cause.
Don’t be shy about your knowledge and experience. Sharing your lived experience can be a very important thing and if it helps you be a small agent of change in some way, then even better. You may only help shape three or four minds, but it cobwebs out from there. If each of those people them does the same, then the effect continues to multiply.
While Andrew talked about Warren Buffet as the idea that TGN was based on, this initiative is a way that normal people can also play an important role in both helping people and businesses, but also support charities.
It’s such an easy thing to do – why would you not do it? You might be doing some of these things already – but for free – so why not take the leap to raise a bit of money for charity at the same time?
Sign up for the Time to Give Network
