CHRISTOPHER IAIN VICTOR FARMER CHRISTOPHER I.V. FARMER

Director / Head of Legal & Compliance (Jan 2018 - Aug 2024) | Herefordshire, UK

Assistant to Director / Business Development Support (Jan 2015 - Jan 2018)

An educational community interest company that grew to become the largest adult learning provider in the three counties (surpassed only by local colleges and universities), operating across 8+ locations with 15 staff, delivering adult learning programmes to vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities.

Mandate: Act as the legal and operational backbone of the organisation. Protect funding eligibility, establish corporate governance, manage commercial contracts, and ensure compliance with stringent UK education, GDPR, and safeguarding regulations.

• Policy suite ownership: governance, HR, safeguarding, data protection, complaints, incident management.
• Contract/grant drafting & negotiation: suppliers, partners, service delivery, funding terms, variations, terminations.
• Operational controls: risk register, obligations tracker, audit evidence logs, remediation/action tracking.

• Digital Transformation: Reduced operating costs by 30% and ensured total business continuity during COVID-19 lockdowns by pioneering a critical infrastructure pivot, successfully migrating all educational services online and automating manual workflows.
• Data Protection & Information Law: Maintained rigorous data protection across 8 operational sites by spearheading GDPR compliance frameworks, executing Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) for cloud rollouts, and managing statutory Subject Access Requests (SARs).
• Legal Advisory & Corporate Governance (SRA QWE): Secured strict adherence to statutory obligations and Companies Act 2006 requirements by advising the executive board on conflicts of interest, CIC regulatory filings, and architecting the organisation's comprehensive legal policy suite.
• Compliance & Audit Operations: Maintained 100% audit pass rates for highly scrutinized EEC, Lottery, and central government funds by designing live compliance dashboards and automated risk registers to track obligations.
• Commercial Contracting & Public Sector Grants (SRA QWE): Strictly controlled liability and protected organisational interests by drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a high volume of commercial contracts, supplier agreements, and NGO Institutional Funding frameworks.
• HR Advisory & Crisis Management: Ensured procedural fairness and defensible HR outcomes by directing complex internal administrative matters, capability reviews, and high-risk grievance procedures in strict adherence to employment law.
• Dispute Resolution & Pre-Litigation (SRA QWE): Successfully avoided costly tribunal proceedings by managing early-stage dispute resolution for vendor conflicts and drafting strategic settlement agreements.
• Operational Leadership & Commercial Growth: Scaled a regional CIC into the largest adult education provider in three counties (outside of universities and colleges) serving vulnerable populations, driving major infrastructure expansion by successfully procuring a £200,000 EEC and Lottery Bid Partnership.

Algorithmic Risk Management, Data Analysis & Quantitative Trading | Geneva, CH / UK

Built and operated a proprietary quantitative trading and risk-management stack synthesizing company fundamentals, technical pattern detection, and real-world macroeconomic policy shifts into systematic signals, position sizing, and risk limits.

• Quantitative Performance & ROI: Achieved exceptionally high year-on-year investment returns—culminating in a >74% ROI in 2024 before ceasing operations—by deploying proprietary quantitative trading systems built to synthesize deep company value analysis, pattern spotting, and the tracking of real-world macroeconomic policy shifts.
• Methodology & Automation: Engineered automated scripts (leveraging Python, Pandas, and Matplotlib) to scrape real-time market data, detecting geopolitical trends and regulatory changes to inform quantitative trading strategies.
• Data Analytics & Sentiment Parsing: Developed proprietary analytical tools to aggregate and detect market analyst sentiment, featuring dynamic filtering based on the delta between current asset prices and predictive targets.
• IP Utilisation & Enterprise Scaling: The proprietary IP and automated workflows built here were subsequently utilized in enterprise consulting for Keystone Analytics, whose CEO was integral to the initial development phase.

Consultant (Legal, Financial & Strategic Advisory) | Remote

Consulted for a multinational enterprise comprising a Las Vegas parent company, a Philippine fintech arm, and associated physical service subsidiaries.

• Strategic Turnaround & Financial Recovery: Played a key role in a funding pivot and cost-control strategy that remediated a large financial loss within 3 months. Materially reduced capital burn while advising on the commercial, compliance, and rollout frameworks for core tech products.
• Venture Capital & Joint Ventures: Targeted $2M+ in funding as Lead VC Consultant for a major public-private solar farm initiative (a joint venture between a hotel magnate and the government energy provider), by directing strategic advisory for the comprehensive white paper and authoring the investor pitch deck.
• Non-Dilutive Funding Strategy: Successfully navigated complex banking regulations to secure alternative funding pipelines for the solar venture, creating supporting materials (requirements, constraints, sequencing) aimed at reducing dilution risk and improving sponsor readiness for lender/investor discussions.
• Foreign Governance & Algorithmic Strategy: Consulted on legal structuring, HR strategy, and contract compliance for a foreign entity operating in the Philippines. Concurrently co-developed the foundational financial logic for their proprietary trading tools, supplying engineering teams with comprehensive data models that mapped fundamental market events and advanced technical indicators to guide predictive agentic workflows.(Example: Architected logic enabling agentic systems to bypass surface-level market panic by correlating public staffing reductions against sustained client contract revenue to identify high-conviction value indicators.)
• Humanitarian & Commercial Partnerships: Established the legal and operational compliance frameworks for joint humanitarian child enterprises, including a semi-private ambulance service and its accompanying SaaS dispatch application, alongside co-authoring commercial applications available on the App Store.

Board Member / Trustee | Herefordshire, UK

Non-executive governance, legal and financial oversight for a charitable company supporting Herefordshire’s VCSE sector.

• Operating scale and complexity: Oversaw governance in an organisation operating at significant scale, with total income rising from £590,632 (FY22) to £933,558 (FY23), increasing complexity of delivery, restricted funding stewardship, and financial controls.
• Financial stewardship under volatility: Helped steer trustee governance through a period of funding volatility and sustained financial pressure, with statutory filings showing two consecutive deficit years: net movement in funds (£36,772) FY23 and (£28,128) FY24.
• Liquidity and resilience oversight: Maintained a cash-first oversight stance to support continuity of services despite deficit conditions, with cash at bank reported at £291,139 (FY23) and £273,645 (FY24).
• Balance sheet pressure and sustainability: Supported board-level sustainability decisions and prioritisation as total funds reduced from £349,578 (FY22) to £284,678 (FY24) (a £64,900 contraction), strengthening governance under constraint.
• Restricted-funds stewardship: Strengthened stewardship of restricted funding by reinforcing purpose discipline and governance around cost allocation and sustainability as restricted fund balances moved from £159,076 (FY22) to £63,620 (FY24) (a £95,456 reduction).
• Governance, compliance and assurance: Maintained compliance-grade governance and reporting discipline (Charities SORP/FRS 102; Companies Act), ensuring decisions were evidence-led, proportionate, and defensible.