Prior to joining Advance HE, he was Associate Dean (Student Experience) at Salford Business School where he worked with colleagues to introduce a series of innovative practices including short technical qualifications, block teaching and an increased emphasis on the use of simulations and experimental learning. He was also involved in setting up a North-West Attainment Gap group bring together business schools.
As an educator, he was nominated as 'most innovative teacher in Higher Education' at the 2016 THEAs and was nominated in Edge Hill University’s Student Teaching award each year between 2012-2019 and won three times. He has worked extensively with a range of universities at the strategic level to develop and rationale their portfolios.
While at Edge Hill University, he was a director of the ERDF funded Productivity and Innovation Centre. The centre worked with a range of organisations to develop new products, services and pricing models based on data driven insights.
Over the last ten years he has involved in both 'pure' research projects and commercially funded work on a consultancy basis. He has undertaken a range of strategic consultancy projects for both higher education and commercial organisations around issues such as micro-qualifications, process re-engineering and portfolio review.
Charles has a PhD in information Systems from the University of Leeds where he was employed as a researcher by the AimTech Research Group. While at the Business School, He was involved in a range of projects around information management and the impact of innovative or disruptive technologies.