BDI chief executive Maxine Horn to step down

Maxine Horn, the founder director of British Design Innovation, is to step down from her role as chief executive of the organisation.

Horn will leave on 31 January, but will retain an ambassadorial role within the BDI to ‘offer ongoing guidance and knowledge-sharing to the management team’. BDI chairman Gus Desbarats says there are no plans to appoint a new chief executive and Horn’s responsibilities will be shared across the organisation’s leadership team.

Horn says she is stepping down from the role in order to spend more time developing Creative Barcode, a new software application that claims to allow designers pitching for work to guard against intellectual property theft.

Horn says, ‘This step away from my BDI responsibilities is a case of natural evolution rather than revolution. The creative industries trading environment is changing at a rapid pace, so I will now be able to adopt a broader creative-sector role and focus on specific issues in a less complex way.’

She adds, ‘I feel very confident in entrusting BDI to the strategic and commercial direction of a widely-respected new chairman, Gus Desbarats, his fellow board directors and an excellent management team.’

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