I’ve always chosen my own path in life. As a young person I was a backpacker and hitchhiker, travelling through Australia, Europe and Africa.

Rejecting recommendations to adopt a conventional career, I started up a workers cooperative aged just 23, going on to set up, scale up and lead 12 social enterprises, charities and companies.

In the last few years I’ve written about my travels and my social enterprises.

Leaving  school in 1975, Patrick Nash worked his passage on a cargo ship from Liverpool to Melbourne, Australia. Arriving with £50 in cash and a cousin who put him up, he spent the next nine months travelling around most of the country and working in factories in Melbourne and Sydney to finance his travels and the journey home.

After university, in 1980 he set off on his own on a journey around North and Central Africa, walking and hitchhiking most of the 14,358 miles.  He hung onto the top of loaded lorries for days on end, had a potentially fatal close encounter with elephants, was thrown in jail in Niger, accidentally travelled with soldiers joining a coup and contracted multiple diseases including malaria and hepatitis. But most of all he was struck by the generosity and kindness of the people he met along the way.  

On returning, he became part of the team that set up one of the UK’s largest vegetarian food wholesale co-operatives. He went on to lead on the development of an eco-village in the north of Scotland. In 1999, Patrick set up the largest workplace counselling service in the UK, Teacherline, along with charities and social enterprises that worked in education to promote healthy working environments. 

In 2005, while setting up a contact centre enterprise, he decided to relocate to the Welsh Valleys, an area of high unemployment, in order to create jobs and growth opportunities. When he left 16 years later Connect Assist employed more than 400 staff, providing 24/7 support to thousands of people each day facing challenging circumstances including mental health issues, poverty and debt, asylum seeking and more.

After 40 years as a social entrepreneur, Patrick has reinvented himself an author, coach and traveller again.  His first book Creating Social Enterprise, My story and what I learned published in 2023, tells the story of his career as a social entrepreneur along with useful lessons he learned in the process.

His second book, Shots Across the Water tells the story of his epic travels across North and Central Africa.

Patrick lives with his wife Amanda in the village of Solva in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. When he is not writing, he is travelling, walking, bodysurfing and spending time in his boat on the water.