Who we are
Independent, member-funded and based in Birmingham since 2014. We write the courses, set the standard and answer your emails.
Our story
Academy was set up in Birmingham in 2014 by five practitioners who were tired of hiring people with good degrees and no idea how to read a supplier contract. They wrote a short course, ran it in a borrowed meeting room and asked the people who took it what was missing.
Twelve years later we have about 2,400 members, five certificates and a course catalogue that covers contracts, suppliers, procurement, commercial risk and working capital. We are independent, member-funded and still small enough that the people who write the courses answer your emails.
What we are for
Our mission
We believe most commercial losses start with ordinary gaps in skill: an unread clause, an unchecked supplier, a payment term nobody negotiated. Our mission is to close those gaps. We set the standard in the open, teach it in plain English, assess it fairly and keep members current as practice changes.
See our certificatesOur people
Our founding members set the standard and sit on the board. Our staff run the courses, the exams and the member services you use every day.
Chair
Margaret spent 25 years running procurement for a regional housing association, where she rewrote its contract templates twice. She chaired the meeting that founded Academy in 2014 and still marks a handful of scripts every exam season to stay close to the work.
Vice Chair
Amara lectured in commercial law for ten years before moving into practice as an in-house adviser to a manufacturing group. She leads the board's work on assessment fairness and wrote the first version of our plain-language drafting guide, now in its fourth edition.
Treasurer
Thomas is a chartered accountant who spent most of his career as finance director of family-owned engineering businesses in the Black Country. He keeps Academy's fees honest, signs off the annual accounts and teaches the working-capital module whenever the timetable allows.
Standards Lead
Hannah managed supplier performance for a large logistics operator, covering several hundred contracts at a time. She owns the Academy standard, chairs the committee that reviews it each year and insists every learning outcome can be tested with a real task.
Programmes Lead
Rahul ran commercial teams in local government before starting a consultancy that helps councils and charities buy services well. He designs Academy's course pathways, recruits our practitioner tutors and still teaches the public-sector procurement elective twice a year.
Head of Learning
Jasmine trained as a teacher, then spent eight years building staff training for a national retailer. She leads the team that turns practitioner knowledge into short modules, case studies and webinars, and she reads every piece of learner feedback we receive.
Head of Certification
Daniel ran exams for a professional body in Cardiff before joining Academy in 2019. He manages question writing, online invigilation, marking and appeals for all five certificates, and he publishes a short report on pass rates and changes after every sitting.
Member Services Manager
Fatima looks after membership, renewals, learning records and the questions that do not fit anywhere else. Before Academy she managed customer service for a Birmingham building society. Her team aims to answer every email within two working days, and usually does.
Platform Lead
Owen builds and runs the systems behind My Academy, the course library and the mobile app. He previously worked as a developer for an online learning company. He cares about pages that load quickly, work with a keyboard and do not lose your progress.
Communications Manager
Sophie edits the member newsletter, runs our webinars and answers press enquiries. She spent six years as a business reporter on a Midlands regional paper, which explains her dislike of jargon and her habit of asking tutors what a sentence actually means.
Latest news & media
Our fifth certificate covers supplier due diligence, onboarding checks and performance reviews. The first cohort starts on 2 November 2026.
Read more about Certificate in Supplier Assurance opens for booking
The recording of our September webinar is now in the member library, with the change-control template the panel used.
Read more about Watch again: managing contract changes without the drama
This year's conference runs on 19 November 2026 in Birmingham, with sessions on supplier failure, late payment and plain-language contracts.
Read more about Registration opens for the autumn conference