LONDON — B2B technology agency Chameleon is making changes to its leadership structure, with co-owner and CEO Tom Berry becoming chairman of the business as he starts a parallel career in teaching.

Tom Buttle (pictured, left) moves up from managing director to CEO, supported by the senior management team of Liz Walker (centre), Jasmin Athwal (second left) and Theresa Meredith-Hardy (second right) who have, over the past 12 months, taken on significant responsibilities for business operations, service development and business development respectively.

From September, Berry (pictured, right) will be in the business for three days a week as chairman – retaining responsibilities for senior client consultancy and global network relationships – and on the other two days he will be teaching GCSE and A-Level Business to secondary school students aged 14-18.

Berry told the Holmes Report: “With four children, I’ve always been very involved in education, and I’ve been doing a lot of work with schools over the past two years. I’ve grown to love it and teaching has always been on the cards. This feels like a natural step, marrying everything I love doing at Chameleon and for myself.”

He said he hoped to elevate communications through his teaching, as the current business studies curriculum includes marketing but not comms: “I want to make comms quite a big element of teaching around the curriculum, because if you’re going to be a good leader, you need to understand brand, reputation and how to communicate internally and externally to move the business forward.”

Berry added: “The public relations industry has huge potential to create good in the world, and PR is an essential part of becoming a better business person. Getting in at grass roots level and flying the flag for the industry among the next generation of business leaders is a huge opportunity.”

As CEO, Buttle will continue to lead Chameleon’s growth. He said of Berry: “He’s passionate about people having the opportunity to learn and explore new things, and already an active contributor in the school community. So I said go for it – 100%. I’m proud we have a business that is culturally and financially strong enough to support the move."

"Over the last year or so I’ve worked closely with our exceptional director team to expand their responsibilities in the business," he added. "Together, we have also brought on board some amazing growth clients, such as TripActions, which recently raised over a quarter of a billion dollars in funding. With growth clients like that, we are on track again for our best year ever.”