Adoption matchmaker: Andy Leary-May, Link Maker Systems chief executive

Andy Leary-May likes finding solutions to problems. It is a characteristic he picked up in childhood watching his engineer father produce car parts in his workshop, and then went on to nurture through an industrial design degree at Brunel University before more recently applying it to the adoption sector.

"Problem-solving and creating new things, whether products, processes or organisations, is what interests me," says Leary-May, who, after eight years running his own design consultancy from the same east London office his dad built in the 1960s, decided he needed a new challenge.

So in 2006, he handed the design consultancy over to his employees, started building a boat with his partner, with whom he had just entered into a civil partnership, and decided it was the right time to adopt. It was just a couple of years after the introduction of new laws, through the Adoption and Children Act, that allowed same-sex couples to adopt. Once he started researching adoption, it didn't take him long to realise there was a distinct lack of support for same-sex couples going through the process. So, typical of Leary-May, he set up New Family Social (NFS), an online support group - now a charity - for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people who have adopted or are adopting.