Colin Sewell-Rutter

Colin Sewell-Rutter was educated at the Universities of Bristol, Sussex and the LSE and later at Henley Management College. He has spent two-thirds of his career in the international airports business with BAA plc and one-third as a leadership adviser with The Results Partnership. In 2004 he joined the Trinity Forum as Executive Director, Europe and served in that position until the end of 2005.

Within his airports life he led BAA’s case at the major planning inquiries that successfully secured planning permission for the developments of Terminal 4 at Heathrow, the North Terminal at Gatwick, and the then-new Stansted development. He held major line roles as Business Development Director at Heathrow Airport and as Managing Director of Airports UK Limited, a BAA subsidiary operating smaller airports in the UK and overseas. He negotiated the acquisition of Southampton Airport for BAA and its wholesale redevelopment. He has worked with the Governments of Guyana, Vietnam, the Lebanon, and Spain.

Within BAA, he was coached by the late Gary Davies, an Anglican priest (for many years vicar of St Mary the Boltons in Chelsea, London) who had left the priesthood to continue his mission in another part of the ‘people business’—the Boardrooms where many of his high-profile congregation spent their working weeks. He with others founded The Results Partnership which then, as now, is focused on corporate renewal and transformational change in organisations—through their leadership. Colin partnered Gary and upon his death in 1998 took over the business. In his final months Gary led some seminal work on societal transformation, including a template for societal change.

Colin is married to Joyce who for many years has been a teacher of deaf and partially hearing children and also recently acquired a postgraduate degree in educational audiology. She now works as an consultant for the Ewing Foundation, which promotes the achievement of deaf children through oral education—helping the deaf to speak rather than living in a private world. They have two sons: Jonathan, a web and computer genius but completing his qualification as an architect, and Matthew, who recently completed a degree in sound technology at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.

They live in a converted—and lovingly restored—Victorian clergy house (with integral church hall!) in Cuckfield in Sussex. They are both parishioners at Holy Trinity Church, Cuckfield: Joyce is on the PCC and Colin has led major fund-raising initiatives for it.

Colin is passionate about Victorian art and architecture. He has supported several organisations in his local community. He is an active Liveryman and Steward of one of the City of London livery companies (the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers)—the only Livery company to have its own guild church: the Wren-built St Margaret Pattens in Eastcheap.