Michael Smith Celebrates Five Years at Accelar

We caught up with newly promoted Associate Director Michael Smith, to reflect on five years at Accelar.

Michael shares insights into his career growth and the company’s evolution. From supporting farmers with nature finance to helping build a pipeline of natural capital projects across the West Midlands, it's been an exciting journey!

“The team help make me laugh when times are stressful and dig in and support when its crunch time with delivery.”

Congratulations on your five-year milestone with Accelar! How have you seen the company grow and evolve during that time?

Thanks! It's been a significant period of change, I've seen colleagues come and go and I've seen us get involved in a whole range of projects. The big change for me has been the growth of our built environment work alongside our nature finance portfolio. If you’d have told me 5 years ago I'd be standing in front of a group of farmers talking about how they can get payments for creating calcareous grassland, I'm not sure I'd have believed you!

You’ve also recently been promoted to Associate Director. Can you tell us about your new role?

I've been very fortunate to grow with this business, and I still feel far too silly for what my title suggests! My new role is exciting, it’s more client engagement, leading projects and managing new business. We’ve got a great new team around us, which means they’re supporting me in project delivery. In a small company, you tend to get involved in a whole host of things, so fortunately I’ve got many people to learn from!

What do you enjoy most about being part of the Accelar team?

The level of food chat is strong, but they’ll kill me if I don’t say the team. They help make me laugh when times are stressful and dig in and support when its crunch time with delivery (past and present!) Likewise, our clients and partners are a great bunch of people working their hardest for nature restoration. I love that I’m able to get involved in a whole host of things, and getting stuck into projects and working with a broad range of people means I’ve learnt a lot in the last five years.

Looking back, what have been some of your standout moments or proudest achievements so far?

Lots to choose from! Earlier this year I got to travel the West Midlands (my home county) chatting to the people trying to deliver nature restoration projects on the ground as part of our WMCA LINC work. It was exhausting (we cycled as much as we could!) but I loved seeing some of those improvements and building a natural capital pipeline with the WMCA. Otherwise, I’ve loved speaking with farmers and landowners about nature restoration and exploring and understanding new mechanisms for funding natural capital.

From the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales to the chalk streams of the Darent Valley, I’ve really got to indulge in the varied habitats we have on these isles. When I joined this business, I spent the first 18 months inside for Covid, so having the opportunity to get out, meet people and explore has been simply lovely. We’ve done so much! I’ve contributed to over 50 projects, and we’ve launched the Nature Finance Impact Hub and BNG Finder which both started over a cup of tea with Chris.

I love being innovative and having the opportunity to come up with new business opportunities. A real proud achievement for me was going back to the University of Birmingham (of which I’m an alumni) to advertise the Impact Internships. We’ve been fortunate to host quite a few interns through the scheme, so to be there presenting on something that back in time I’d have been in the audience for was a real opportunity!

“I’d really like us to move into implementation alongside some of our projects.”

Where would you love to see Accelar heading in the future?

I’d really like us to move into implementation alongside some of our projects. As our sectors have grown, we’ve been very much in the ‘discovery’ phase of exploring mechanisms and testing out theories and approaches. Now we’re moving into delivery, it’d be great to continue to leverage our experience in supporting these projects to ‘get spades in the ground’!