After leaving school Michael completed his 5 years engineering apprenticeship and moved to Hawker Siddeley, based in Hatfield, which became BA Systems. Over the course of his career he has put his engineering expertise to work on a variety of planes including Tridents and the AirBus. During his time at BA Systems he travelled the world including USA, China and Africa.

During his time in Africa he saw the benefit of providing tools to a community. ‘It became clear to me after visiting Africa that if you give people the tools they will put their hand to anything, but when they don’t have the tools to start with or the equipment how can they do it or make a living?’