Dr Nikos Savvas, West Suffolk College, won Business Leader of the Year. His award was collected by Phil Stittle, the college's business development director
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00:00We're joined by Phil from West Suffolk College who's just picked up the Business Leader Award
00:06on behalf of Dr Nikos Savvas. Phil, tell us about Nikos and why he deserves that award.
00:11Nikos is inspirational. He leads from the front. He looks five to ten years ahead. He
00:18is literally someone I look up to. He is a role model and he serves the community so
00:27well and so is just from this award. How passionate is he about lifelong learning?
00:37He is here for Suffolk, for the eastern region. He could have gone anywhere with the credentials
00:46he has but he stayed locally. He wants to improve Suffolk education. He wants to improve
00:52eastern education and his desire to just improve everybody's thought and skill and
01:03training is empowering. Just great. Fantastic. Tell us about some of the key achievements
01:09you feel that may have contributed towards this award tonight, maybe over the last year
01:12or over the last few years. Yes, so I've worked at the college now for ten years. Nikos called
01:20me back and I was at the college before he came and I've now come after he came and it's just
01:26been transformational every year. He has a drive to succeed. He has a drive to bring people with
01:33him and to do things that other people can't do. You talked about his drive. What other facets of
01:40his leadership do you think make him such a good leader? It's hard to keep up with him. He just
01:49wants the best and if you just hang on his coattails you'll actually get the best and he's
01:57just on for more than what we can deliver here in local Suffolk, local Bury. If you look at what we
02:03are doing at the moment, we are the sixth largest provider of apprenticeships in England. We have
02:09over 5,000 16 to 18 year olds training with us just in sleepy Suffolk. We need to shout loud and
02:17proud what we do here and Nikos is the person to do it and he'll have that response from the
02:25general public that is looking at education. Obviously behind every great leader is a strong
02:31and supportive team. How important are they, do you feel, behind him in terms of ensuring
02:36that 15,000 students are equipped for success? Yes, we have a very, very strong leadership team
02:42at the college and again we try and keep up with Nikos. We take it year to year because the growth
02:53is exponential. From knowing when I left County Upper, just down the road from the college,
03:00the college was doing 600 students. It's now 3,800 students and go wow, how has it grown so
03:07much and the facilities it has, the XR lab, the care hub, you just keep going and going and going
03:15and I just think as a local we are very lucky to have the college here, have Nikos as our leader.
03:23It's just brilliant and I'm so lucky to be part of that. Congratulations to Nikos and
03:29Phil, thank you very much. Thanks so much, thank you.