Mr Ian Kirkham

Ian is married with two grown up children. He and his wife Jayne have lived in Stinchcombe for 9 years having spent the previous 27 years in Reading.  They are fortunate to be able to work from home most of the time. Ian works for Actian as a Software Architect; they are a US company based in Palo Alto and he has worked with them for 14 years.

He has a wide range of interests, some of which are particularly practical and others that register high on the nerd scale & are best avoided in conversation. He has usually been involved in his local communities since serving as a Student Representative as part of his Gold DofE award. At Nottingham University he was on the Staff-Student consultative committee for the Psychology Dept, on the Computing Society committee and served on the University’s Nightline.

He moved to Reading to work for Digital Equipment Corp & married Jayne. As their family grew up he served as a parent governor before being drawn into scouting, initially as a Skills Instructor, then as Scout Leader for 10-15yr olds, then leading the 14-18yr Explorer Scouts; there followed a 7 year stint as the District Commissioner responsible for Central Reading’s 16 scout groups. This role was like that of a company boss who would be able to hire and fire except your ‘hires’ are volunteers and they’re more likely to walk if you are at all heavy handed. Safeguarding issues get focussed at this level and it’s usually the case that you’d be the last to know of any successes and first in the queue for any flak.