Stuart MacLennan, CEO of Circular 1 Health, a revolutionary testing company, tells us about his career

He says: "I was born in a little town called Lochgilphead in Argyll and I grew up with the values of agriculture all around me, which is about respect and about building investment in the land. Working with nature, not against it, has driven me in everything I’ve ever done. My career first started in farming; I worked for a fantastic business in southwest Scotland for 3 years where I learnt a lot about how to operate at scale, how to delegate, how to work with people, work with different skills, multitask, build and take responsibility.

This led me into professional roles such as Agricultural Business Advisor for a company called Genus Breeding Limited. I spent 14-15 years with Genus which took me from agricultural business advisor to working with farming business all over Cumbria and Scotland, to running part of that business as the Manager for the North of England and Scotland. The next part of my journey was moving into General Manger for UK and Ireland and forming part of the EU Management Team.

I left the corporate world in 2013, having learnt lots about the business and about myself, with a challenge from some great peers that I respected immensely: “Do something for yourselves, build your own pension, build your own future, make your own mark”

With that influence I set about building businesses which took me to set up international companies in Italy, Ireland, and Russia. This involved lots of traveling, lots of working with different people and getting things off the ground, which is something I thoroughly enjoy as it’s all about getting people together and making special things happen.

I then went on to set up Cows&Co. I brought together a group of individuals to improve and expand a small cheese business in Appleby, in Cumbria. With the success of this we achieved significant inward investment and market opportunities. Opportunity was then enabled for the setup of an energy company and with that we partnered with several business all over the country to produce sustainable power, which has been used for many diverse things such as drying grass to producing steam for cheese, to making pet bedding and everything in between. This is still ongoing to this day.

Making a difference is my passion. Working with Chris Stanley, Mark Frost and David Nuttal (FNS) we were able to pull together a team to take on the challenge of COVID-19. By bringing the experience that Chris carries from using LAMP diagnostic testing for human TB, and FNS experience in biosecurity in plant nurseries, we created the basis that forms Circular1 Health as a response to the challenge that Covid-19 presented to society and business. We set up a small head office in Carlisle and our first mobile lab on a client site in West Cumbria, followed by our first flagship lab in Barrow-in-Furness. Our laboratory footprint has expanded across Manchester, London and the SouthWest since then, but our roots and biggest partner-clients are still in Cumbria. It is where we are delivering our Academy to develop local skills and jobs, and where we are building the foundations of our preventative health programme.

Covid-19 has created the biggest disruption in society we’ve ever known, probably since the last war, and that’s resulted in a lot of challenge, personal stress, and business stress. When you have that level of challenge you need to give people some confidence, so we started off by putting in place COVID-19 screening for large businesses across the country.

At a consumer level it is our ambition to democratise healthcare; people deserve the right to have this and the NHS should not be obligated to do all the work. Working with large business allows us to put programmes in place that can support the consumer.

Cumbria is at the heart of everything we do. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the country, it sits there on top of the industrial heartland of the North of England and has the most stunning coastlines with all the challenges that come with its legacy as a coastal community. I love what Cumbria stands for: it’s a land of promise and opportunity and if we look at the future of the sustainable world, it’s a place to make a difference."