Simon Edwards

Simon has been a soldier, a restaurateur, an author, a coach a leadership consultant and an entrepreneur. After 16 years service in the British Army, he set up a successful restaurant business before running the Pierre Victoire restaurant chain. Simon founded a charity, Believe, to inspire change amongst young and adult offenders. He was a member of the Centre of Social Justice reports on prisons chaired by Jonathan Aitken, Breakdown/Breakthrough Britain and Locked Up Potential. Simon was the co-founder/CEO of the Mowgli Foundation, an international charity providing coaching and mentoring for entrepreneurs in the Middle East and Africa. He is a director of Urban Pursuit, supporting those excluded from school. He is a non-executive director of both Chomp, a Bristol based restaurant business, and The Bristol Distilling Company. Simon was a director of Friska and coached the two founders to the levels of success they now enjoy. He founded Serve On, building teams to serve communities at home and abroad, deploying to the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the Caribbean hurricane in 2017. With Help for Heroes he designed the Pathfinder Experience to support the transition of wounded soldiers, which led to a Winston Churchill Fellowship studying Military Mental Health in the US, NZ and Australia. His report Soldier of Hope is now published. He is working to establish programmes to prevent mental health issues in the workplace through better leadership. He has recorded his journey of faith and Christian entrepreneurship in a book ‘Be – A Disciple’s Journey.’

His philosophy is based on wisdom the ultimate gift of faith. He has learned whatever wisdom he now has through the trial of the quest that started the moment he walked through a prison gate.  Since then having dedicated the last 20 years of his life to bring about change in areas most resistant to it, he has realized that the attribute most needed by our leaders is wisdom. Wisdom is wrought from the experiences of life and the ability to reflect and learn from those experiences.  It gives us a deep understanding of human nature and the ability to understand what is true and right and the ability to judge how best to act in any situation.

We can’t choose the times we live in, but we are responsible for the time given to us. So we need to create a new paradigm based on the Christian foundations of human relationship and interdependence; a world that is living in harmony with its environment; a world where we truly value compassion and wisdom. Wisdom requires us to invest in the diversity of human talent not in conformity. We have to work together to create a world where all individuals are valued and where everyone is fulfilling their true talent and using it not just for selfish gain but for the good of all.

His is married, has four daughters and lives in France and Bath.