John Vickers, Chief Executive Officer, Blue Abyss

After spending eight years in the British Army, John left to join a City-based Management Consultancy. There he worked on leadership and management development programmes for some of the world’s Fortune 100 companies including: American Express; Oracle; and British American Tobacco. A subsequent move to IBM, saw him heading up the department he only joined some 18 months earlier. John was subsequently head hunted to GE Capital where he looked after a FTSE 100 client followed by rapid promotion through regional sales management to General Manager-level heading up the eBusiness initiative within the company. John has experience of two previous start-ups including a consultancy business, which influenced IBM to subsequently transform their own approach to eBusiness selling, and heading up a company which had developed an incredibly thin insulation material. John is a qualified Six Sigma Black Belt practitioner and believes passionately about connecting our marine evolutionary heritage and future space exploration.