Colonel Chris Sharwood-Smith has served the East Anglian RFCA as a military member since 2004 in Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire. He has been Chair of the RFCA Hertfordshire Employer Engagement Group, and vice chair and chair of the Bedfordshire RFCA Forum.

Chris Sharwood-Smith became a Cadet Force Adult Volunteer with the ACF in 1986 and has since held the appointment of Commandant of Beds & Herts Army Cadet Force and Colonel Cadets for East Anglia with 7 Infantry Brigade. In 2016, he was tasked by GOC Regional Command to conduct Project Libra, a study into the effects of bureaucracy on the Cadet Force Adult Volunteer. In 2018 he was appointed National Training Adviser for the Army’s Cadet Forces (ACF & CCF) working from Regional Command. He retired his commission in 2020.

Chris has spent over forty years in Law Enforcement, having served in the UK Police Service at senior level both domestically and abroad. He is Managing Director of CSS Global Consulting Ltd and a Senior Lecturer with Anglia Ruskin University delivering the Police Degree Apprenticeship.

He was appointed to the Most Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem for services to mankind through First Aid in 1993, Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Bedfordshire in 2014 and Member of Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s Hours list for 2017. He was appointed HM Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Bedfordshire in 2018.

He enjoys volunteering and is the chair of Bedfordshire St John Priory Group, a life governor of the Royal Humane Society, Vice Patron of Autism Bedfordshire and Families United Network (FUN).