Ryan Heal leaves his job as managing director of the Brighton radio station Juice 107.2 tomorrow (Friday 1 September).
On Monday (3 September) he will start his new job as chief executive of Rockinghorse, the Brighton children’s charity.
He said that he had always felt that it would have to be something quite powerful to lure him away from running Juice.
It was. It turned out to be his son falling ill. And that had meant many trips to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital.
His life, he said, had come full circle and he was going back to his roots.
Mr Heal was born in the Royal Sussex County Hospital 36 years ago. And his new job has close ties to one of the hospital’s best-loved departments – the Trevor Mann Baby Unit.
At Rockinghorse he will also have close ties with the Royal Alex which is now on the same Kemp Town site as the Royal Sussex.
After what he described as a fantastically enjoyable career in radio, he is reluctant to cut all ties.
He said: “Because I bleed Juice, I’m remaining on the board as a non-executive director.”
His love of radio and his love of Brighton and Hove and the surrounding area earned him the title of Outstanding Brightonian at the last Brighton and Hove Business Awards.
And it was his charity fundraising that won the judges’ attention.
Mr Heal grew up locally, attending Brighton College, before heading off to study history at Kingston University in south west London. After graduating he faced a battle between his head and his heart.
He said: “I always wanted to be a teacher but it wasn’t really paying the rent at that stage and I fell into a sales job.”
He worked on business and professional magazines such as Computer Weekly and Personnel Today, selling advertising for about 18 months.
He said: “Then the calling began … to work my way back towards Sussex.”
His next job brought him to Burgess Hill where he worked for a recruitment consultancy.
