Career

Chris Baker is an engineering science and business school graduate and a chartered accountant with a career spanning technology commercialisation, innovation advisory, and private equity backed leadership. He brings a distinctive mix of technical insight, financial acumen, entrepreneurial experience with board governance to supporting new ventures emerging from research environments.

Early in his career, Chris worked internationally as a management analyst and consultant across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Funded by development agencies, he delivered planning and information systems for organisations in manufacturing, transport, logistics, and agriculture; experience that grounded his practical, systems driven approach to strategic and operational business building.

He later held senior roles within a major UK engineering group, both in operational management and within its central R&D facility. There he helped commercialise novel electronic and optical sensors, creating value through new and joint ventures, and licensing agreements. During this time, he contributed to the UK design and innovation landscape as a member of the Design Council’s product innovation panel and as a judge for the British Design Awards.

He went on to build a strong track record with private equity investors, serving as finance director for engineering services and digital media businesses, yielding successful exits through trade sales to UK listed companies, applying his expertise in business modelling, strategic and operational planning, investment raising and due diligence investigation.

More recently, he has held directorships in consultancy and a UK venture capital fund and has supported UK technology start ups through extensive evaluation work for the Innovate UK Innovation Funding Service, assessing more than a thousand early stage grant and loan applications. He continues to support emerging founders in shaping commercially robust, scalable technology based businesses.