Oliver Lee OBE
Senior leadership development advisor
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Oliver Lee OBE
Oliver is a highly experienced chief executive and board member. He has a lifelong fascination in leadership and organisational culture and writes and speaks on these subjects. He currently leads Places Leisure, a national organisation of 100 sites and 6500 people that delivers sport, fitness, wellbeing and healthier communities.
On graduating from Cambridge, he joined the Royal Marines and had a career of unprecedented success, becoming the youngest full colonel since World War II. Commanding 45 Commando in Afghanistan, he led repeatedly on front line operations all over the world and was decorated three times by the Queen for doing so. His other roles were principally at the strategic level in Whitehall, including working personally for Ministers.
Oliver left the Royal Marines on a point of personal principle in 2014 after eighteen years. He has since built a successful second career as a CEO, beginning with six years at The Challenge, a large social enterprise delivering government and other contracts and dedicated to developing young people through social inclusion and integration.