Stake & Soul

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Harriet Kelsall, award-winning designer, author, and founder of Harriet Kelsall Bespoke Jewellery, one of the UK’s leading bespoke jewellery companies. Harriet started the business on her kitchen table in 1998, while working as an engineering manager in the film-editing side of Tektronix UK, and has grown it over nearly three decades into a 42-strong team across four studios in North Hertfordshire, Cambridge, Primrose Hill and St Albans. ...

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Amy Barry, who sold 75% of her communications agency di:ga into an Employee Ownership Trust in 2023 and completed a careful two-year founder-CEO transition in 2025. A former journalist for The Times and The Mail on Sunday, Amy spent her early career at Oxfam and Global Witness. What began as freelancing from Bristol grew almost accidentally into a 12-person strategic communications agency, working with mission-driven clients including Oxf...

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Andrew Lane, Chairman and former Managing Director of Union Industries, the Leeds-based manufacturer of high-speed industrial doors that transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust in 2014. Andrew joined Union in 2014 to lead the transition itself and has just handed over the MD role to Neil after a three-year, deliberately-staged succession, a rare example of an EO business getting both the ownership transition and the leadership transit...

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Tom Vincent, CEO of 2020 Project Management Training, the Scottish-founded, UK-based specialist that transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust in 2018 and, seven years on, was named EO Business of the Year at the 2025 UK Employee Ownership Awards. Tom joined 2020 in 2014 after a career in the Royal Engineers, moved onto the board in 2018 just as the EOT deal was being done, and inherited both the CEO chair and the responsibility of payi...

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Johnny Aisher, who spent 40 years at the John Lewis Partnership and retired on 31 March 2025, most recently as a director of the John Lewis Partnership Trust. Having joined as one of 21 graduate trainees in 1985 and made his way from the shop floor at Oxford Street through IT management to two decades as Clerk to the Council, Johnny brings a rare 40-year view on what the UK's original employee-owned business gets right, gets wrong, and ca...