For a quarter of a century, Russell Wardrop has been in the same line of work—creating rainmakers.
As co‑founder and chief executive of KWC Global, based in Glasgow and London, Wardrop has made a career of helping lawyers, accountants and financiers learn the commercial skills business school often forgets: how to sell, lead and grow. His thesis is disarmingly simple: if learning and development is designed correctly and linked to tangible outcomes, it stops being an overhead and starts paying for itself.
‘Too much L&D is treated as a discretionary cost,’ he says. ‘It’s not quite entertainment, but it’s rarely embedded in strategy or measured against the top line. That’s a big miss—so we made it our mission.’
The spark: from lecture theatre to marketplace
Wardrop and his co‑founder—and wife—Sharon (pictured) began in academia. He had trained as an architect and developed a parallel career as a speaker; she studied law, relished the detail and, by his account, ‘loved a spreadsheet’. Between them they had deep experience in building and validating degree and postgraduate programmes. What they could see, and what many firms could not, was the chasm between technical excellence and commercial impact.
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