Rod Aldridge

A social entrepreneur with over 40 years experience in the public, private and third sectors, Rod Aldridge established the Aldridge Foundation in 2006 to further the work of his charitable trust. The Aldridge Foundation uses entrepreneurship as the catalyst for creating lasting social change for young people and their communities, by empowering young people to direct their own lives, raise their aspirations and change their future for the better, creating opportunities for young people that develop skills and assist them to achieve excellence, and building new partnerships and challenging current structures, thus enabling young people to realise their potential.

The focus is delivering a number of high profile activities in London, Darwen, Falmer, Salford and Birmingham. All of these promote the ideals of the Foundation, and the small, dedicated team support Rod in his roles, including as the Sponsor of two Academies.

As the entrepreneurial founder of the Capita Group in 1984 until his retirement in 2006, Rod led the company to become the market leader in the provision of support and professional services to the government and private sector in the UK. Today, the Capita Group is a FTSE 100 company, employs 34,000 people and interacts with 33 million people through the services it delivers. It has a market capitalisation of over £4billion and is the best performing share ever in the FTSE. During this time, Rod was also Chairman of the CBI Public Service Strategy Board at its inception in 2003.

Prior to Capita, Rod worked in local government for ten years with East Sussex County Council, Brighton Borough Council, Crawley District Group and West Sussex Council, becoming a qualified account with CIPFA in 1970, joining CIPFA in 1974, and ultimately becoming its Technical Director.

Rod was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006. He was awarded an OBE in the 1994 New Years Honours List for services to the computer industry, and was given the freedom of the City of London in 1996. He is on the Court of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Rod is also Chair of ‘v’- the charity launched in May 2006 which aims to inspire and engage over one million new youth volunteers, and in January 2007, was appointed Chairman of The Lowry, the theatre and arts venue in Salford. He is also a patron of the Prince’s Trust.  In addition, he is a member of The Lab Board at NESTA and a board member of Equiniti.  He also sits on the Board of the Centre for Public Sector Partnerships at the University of Birmingham, and was recently invited to join the Prince of Wales' Charities Council. 

From 2009 he also became Chair of the Department of Health's Dance Champions Group, with the aim of inspiring 100,000 more adults across the country to take up dance as a regular form of physical activity.

He is a regular speaker at conferences and is a contributor to the debate on public service reform, user voice and youth engagement.