Triathlon Trust CEO inspires students

First year Sport Business Management BSc(Hons) students received a guest lecture by Mike Jubb, CEO of the Triathlon Trust, as part of the Finance for Sport Management module. Mike has managed to combine his passion for sport with a successful career in business making him the perfect guest speaker!

Mike is a qualified management accountant who trained with Rolls-Royce Plc before spending 16 years with the UK, European and Global Head Office of HSBC undertaking various roles including Head of Finance for UK Credit Cards and UK internet banking. His appetite to tackle and implement change successfully resulted in project managing the off-shoring of European accountancy processes to India and ensuring Europe’s compliance with Sarbanes Oxley (US legislation following the Enron scandal).

Alongside his accountancy career Mike launched the Best Place to Workout Programme, one of the UK’s first employee engagement programs focused on health and well-being. This resulted in the HSBC triathlon, an annual event that still runs today.

At the start of 2013 Mike was asked to project manage the launch of the Triathlon Trust; the charity has now worked with over 100,000 children across the UK, encouraging them to lead more healthy and active lifestyles, through fun and inclusive events.  The Trust has also successfully collaborated with organisations such as the Brownlee Foundation and the Brownlee brothers to raise the profile and impact of the sport.

Aside from his career, Mike has represented England and Great Britain at orienteering, cross-country, athletics and duathlon. No longer to be seen at the front of races, he now enjoys the challenge of triathlon events, and has completed two Ironman races…..but will be focusing on shorter distances going forward. He is also a qualified and practicing British triathlon coach.

During his talk Mike demonstrated that it is possible to combine a sporting passion with business through hard work and enthusiasm. He also spoke about how important finance is to turning great ideas into successful ventures and why some great organisations fail because of poor financial management. The value of volunteers in non-profit sporting organisations was also stressed and a number of students commented on how they would like to get more involved – the university’s volunteering service Active Student helps our students find the right opportunity for them.

The group discussed how organisations such as the Triathlon Trust are funded, and how the Trust’s impact is measured to ensure it can demonstrate value for money to all its stakeholders. They were also given the opportunity to explain their virtual Sports Business Investment Portfolio strategies to Mike, who provided real life insight into what factors influence share prices and the financial value of sport businesses.

Mike left everyone with some useful lessons for sport, business, and life: “True success is like building a wall where each brick represents an action along the way; it takes a long time to build a wall, no single brick defines your success, but every brick count towards it.”

Richard Burgess-Gamble, who delivers the Finance for Sport Management module, said: “Mike gave some fantastic insight during his talk.

“He left the students with no doubt that the combination of sport and business will make for an exciting career combination.”