Biography

Leonard Sym has been running Sym Associates out of Central Scotland for the last eighteen years. The business focuses on a range of complementary services within business consultancy and training. The business started within the field of entrepreneurial development and has grown in the deeply opportunistic way.

The story however, started many years before that. Not content with taking a year out between school and university, he took seven. The first two were spent working in electronics within Glasgow University and the then Paisley College. He then left the UK and worked in Continental Europe for the next five years, turning his hand to working in hotels; printing, plate making and photo montage work; as well as running kitchens within two Swiss hotels. After this he wandered back to Scotland, took a first degree in Economics, and then an MBA – both at Glasgow University.

He worked for three years within the modestly titled Centre for Entrepreneurial Development within the Glasgow University Business School. Whilst lecturing at the GUBS, he cut his teeth in consultancy and business specific training. At this point, GUBS ran one of only five High Growth Business Start Up programmes in the UK. In the late eighties he left to work in the commercial arm of what is now the Caledonian University, setting up and delivering the Business Start Up course. The business grew fast and he was involved in setting up their business consultancy division, and later working in business development in Central and Eastern Europe. Contacts made in the early nineties in Hungary are still kept alive, with him still visiting Hungary regularly.

Nineteen ninety-four saw the creation of Sym Associates. The business was founded on an opportunity to service the high growth start up programme within the Stirling area. Business planning was undertaken, and many millions of pounds raised for new businesses. In parallel, he did work in innovation planning, integrating innovation cost flows into business plans, and supporting applications for SMART awards, SPUR (support for Products Under Research), SCIS (Small Companies Innovation Scheme), and Regional Selective Assistance. His electronics and engineering background gave him the technical ability to understand new products and innovations, and to bring his business background to bear at this critical juncture.

He took the opportunity in 2005/06 to get back to his roots in engineering, and has completed a Cisco Wireless Networking Support Engineer course at Paisley University. He has allowed the business to get involved in the cutting edge of business technology. In reality it has meant he sorts out the wireless problems of friend's computers and laptops.

Sym Associates now offers a range of integrated business services covering training; management, coaching and mentoring: consultancy; business and innovation planning and fund raising: executive and business coaching as well as mentoring.

Recently he has developed a range of facilitated management courses for a major Oil Services business, and is delivering these and in-house courses within the UK, Europe & Africa.

Over the last few years a number of opportunities have arisen to get back into the Higher Education Sector. He is now tutoring within the Open University's MBA programme as well as designing distance learning material for Robert Gordon's University Business School. He is currently doing an MSc in Human Resource Management to update skills.

In addition, Sym Associates has also built a range of partnership over the years. To get more information on these partnership, go to the partners page.

Leonard Sym MA(Hons) MBA FRSA MInstLM