Mark Bowen has been employed as a business and funding adviser for the last nine years working in the public sector for North Kesteven District Council, Lincolnshire County Council and Lincolnshire Enterprise and in the Social Enterprise sector with Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency. Since June 2008 he has been the Business Development Manager at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln (BG).
A great deal of his work has involved assessing and analysing business ideas or businesses themselves and providing advice and support to help them achieve their objectives. As a result, he has worked with a diverse range of businesses operating across many sectors but with a focus on social enterprise and the Third Sector.
Currently he manages the Sky Centre business incubation unit at BG and is a Director of BG Touring Ltd, a spin-out social enterprise engaged in performing arts.
Mark holds a MSc in Social Entrepreneurship together with post-graduate qualifications in HRM and Managing European Funded Projects and is currently a Director of two social enterprise businesses.
Dr. Jan Bennett is Head of Corporate Projects in the Research & Enterprise Directorate at the University of Plymouth. His job involves responding flexibly (and across a wide range of disciplines) to local, regional, national and international opportunities for diversifying the University's income streams and knowledge transfer activities - usually leading to a large funding bid. He has recently initiated an internal Social Enterprise initiative within the University which is encouraging staff and students to set up their own Social Enterprises, and supporting them in starting up their businesses.
John Braime is Volunteering Manager at University College London Union, where he supports students to get involved in community projects across London. John has also worked in community development, youth volunteering, and welfare advice work. He is one of the co-founders of writLOUD, a charity literary night in Bloomsbury, London.
Dan Corlett is Assistant Director (Entrepreneurship and Innovation) at the University of Birmingham's Careers and Employability Centre.
His team provide the services that help entrepreneurial students and graduates to create their own enterprises. Dan has spent three years running programmes to fund, train, mentor and equip new entrepreneurs and prior to that was involved in a number of small business starts himself. Dan comes from a technology background, specifically the design of learning technologies. Related to this work, he held a Medici fellowship in 2005-6 that sought to commercially exploit the University's research and development.
Dan is a strong advocate of social enterprise. He is a member of the Transformational Business Network, which seeks to provide enterprise solutions to poverty.
Chris Hall is The Hive Business Manager, responsible for running The Hive, a purpose built Centre for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise at Nottingham Trent University. The Hive was created in 2001 to help support staff, students and alumni develop high growth creative, knowledge and technology based start-up enterprises and give them the skills to run their own businesses, as well as to help drive the entrepreneurship agenda into the curriculum across the university.
Prior to joining The Hive, Chris worked for over 35 years in a wide range of companies throughout British Industry from "blue chip" to SME's, in sectors ranging from heavy engineering to food and drink and from roofing products to plastics. Principally employed in roles of operational management, manufacturing and logistics, he has managed several subsidiary operations for major plc's and has also run his own business consultancy.
Dr. Chris Low is Head of the Division of Public Health and Wellbeing at the University of Huddersfield. He initially joined the School as Social Enterprise Lead in 2008. Before that he worked for four years as a Senior Lecturer in Business Strategy in the School of Business. He previously operated as a management consultant in the social enterprise and private sectors.
In addition to his Head of Division duties, Chris leads on enterprise and leadership education for health professionals within the School. He runs a number of contracts with external partners including NHS Leeds Community Healthcare and Capacity Builders. He sits on the board of Leeds City Council's Keeping House project which supports independent living social enterprises. He is an External Assessor for Glasgow Caledonian University's MSc Social Enterprise and also acts as an advisor to social enterprises operating in holistic therapy, midwifery and community dentistry.
His research interests include the governance of social enterprises and the use of partnerships between public, private and social enterprise sectors to address health and social care problems.
Professor James A. Powell is presently on sabbatical from his last University role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic Enterprise & Regional Affairs) and working on a range of research, development, innovation and academic enterprise projects which emanate from his successful time in Higher Academic Enterprise at Salford University and also as a result of his pioneering 'Smart City Futures' conference; the latter uniquely involved the local communities and small businesses in a highly interactive mode empowering citizens to undertake key developments in conjunction with the other Greater Manchester Universities.
He was a member of the HEFCE's Business and Community Committee and with their support led a consortium of five British Universities benchmarking themselves against the five best enterprise Universities in the rest of Europe with a view to developing 'performance metrics and drivers' for University Third Stream activity, known as UPBEAT.
Dr. Rory Ridley-Duff is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Behaviour and Human Resource Management at Sheffield Business School. His professional background was gained as a director of worker co-operatives designing and delivering enterprise-level software systems to third sector organisations. After winning a Sheffield Hallam PhD studentship, he completed a 3-year project on corporate governance in social enterprises. He is now co-investigator for a 30-month Big Lottery Research Project (with St Marys Church, Sheffield) on learning activities in the Pakistani community. A regular contributor to conferences and academic journals, most of his articles focus on the application of democratic management, ownership and governance principles in cooperative social enterprises.
He is the founder of the MSc Social Enterprise and Business Democracy degree at Sheffield Business School, and also contributes to teaching on the MSc Charity Resource Management led by Professor Gareth Morgan. He recently added a Cooperative and Social Enterprise Summer School to the university's portfolio of CPD courses, and completed his third book, Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice, co-authored with Mike Bull for Sage Publications.
Mandy White is currently in the process of setting up social entrepreneurship activity within the University of Huddersfield, working with 2nd and 4th year students; and although she is new to activities within this field she is keen to commit to the role.
Alongside her lecturing at the University, Mandy runs a successful event management company. She has been running her own business since 2000 and is therefore able to offer a range of advice to staff and students who are looking at starting social enterprises.
She is a keen networker, regularly attending a range of industry events and conferences and is looking forward to speaking at events as an advocate for social entrepreneurship. Within her company Mandy has worked with a range of charities and community groups as well as councils to help them set up and run successful events.
Mandy is intending to begin a MA in Enterprise programme which she hopes will support her work.
