Rick Goakes

Practice Director - Executive Search @Urban Connect

Manchester, GB

I am the Practice Director at Urban Connect, leading our specialist Search division. We partner with executive and operational boards across the Energy & Infrastructure sectors to strengthen leadership capability where it most directly impacts enterprise value, delivery certainty, and sustainable growth. In an environment defined by regulatory pressure, decarbonisation mandates, capital volatility, and acute skills shortages, leadership quality is a strategic advantage. We mitigate commercial and delivery risk by securing leaders who stabilise performance, unlock growth, and scale organisations through complex change. We support flagship capital infrastructure programmes, advise across strategic frameworks, and deliver senior appointments that have driven significant improvement in margin protection, programme certainty and uplift in bid conversion / mobilisation speed through a data-led, outcomes-focused advisory approach.

Liverpool John Moores University

Biomechanics