James Andrew Reed , FCIPD (born April 1963) is a British businessman. He is chairman and chief executive of the Reed group of companies. He is the son of Sir Alec Reed, who founded the company in 1960. He is chairman of The Big Give Trust, a match-funding charity supported in part by the Reed Foundation and the Reed family. The Big Give has raised over £240 million for UK-registered charities and aims to raise £1 billion by 2030.
Education
Reed attended Scaitcliffe prep school and St Paul's. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1984 with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and subsequently gained an MBA from Harvard Business School. At Oxford, Reed was political editor of Samizdat, a magazine for political science students. At Harvard he produced In The Shadow of The City, a case study and video about slum improvement works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Early career
Reed's first job was levelling graves at a graveyard in Old Windsor, which he described as "...miserable, it was cold, it was horrible and hard - and I didn't last very long at it."
He graduated from Oxford in 1984, seeking to work for an entrepreneur. He sent a speculative job application to Gordon and Anita Roddick of The Body Shop, working in the firm's stores in Brighton and Great Marlborough Street, London. The Roddicks then hired him as Gordon's assistant. Reed then worked for Saatchi & Saatchi between 1985–1986, where he managed advertising campaigns for British Rail, Club 18-30, Eurotunnel and Procter and Gamble.
From 1987 to 1988 he coordinated relief and development programmes in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, on behalf of Help the Aged and Afghanaid. He coordinated fundraising, publicity, and sponsorship for Afghanaid and covered the Afghan conflict for The Independent newspaper. He entered Afghanistan disguised as an Afghan travelling with Mujahideen rebels.
Reed joined the BBC in 1990, after graduating from Harvard. He produced documentaries for BBC TV on topics such as Tom Peters and prison privatisation. After the Tom Peters documentary grossed £1m, Reed requested funding for a similar programme but was denied, prompting him to leave the BBC.
He became a non-executive director of Reed in 1992. In a 2014 radio interview, he spoke of the background to joining the family business full-time: "Joining the family business wasn't a fait accompli. When my father got to 60 he said, 'James, there's not much point having a family business if there isn't any family in it'. I'd been sitting on the fence for some time. Then one day he said, ‘That job that I have been talking to you about? It’s going to be in The Sunday Times Appointments section next week – do you want to apply or not?'."Reed frequently acknowledges that his appointment to the family business was based partly on nepotism, telling The Guardian in 2010 that "...there is no other way to describe it.” Reed's father is quoted as believing that family-run businesses "...cut out a lot of company politics".
Reed Group
Reed became operations director at Reed Group in April 1994 and chief executive in 1997; Reed's father gave him a baton to symbolise the handover of power. The baton now hangs on the wall of Reed's personal office. He succeeded his father to the position of Chairman in 2004.
Reed has said that his three most significant contributions to the Reed Group are the development of reed.co.uk, the introduction of Reed in Partnership and the globalisation of the company. The company's revenue has increased from £150 million to £1.2 billion under his leadership.
Reed in Partnership
In 1997 Reed was invited to bid on contracts issued by the Blair administration, in which some of the traditional work of Job Centres was outsourced to the private sector. This resulted in Reed in Partnership, which now employs 2500 people.
In July 2023, Reed Group launched Reed Environment, an initiative whose main focus is establishing Energy Academies across the UK by 2025. These Academies will provide essential skills training for assessors and installers of net-zero technologies, including solar power, electric vehicles and heat pumps. In addition, the Academies will offer job opportunities, energy advice and consultancy solutions related to retrofitting homes for energy efficiency.