PERSONAL PROFILES & COMMERCIAL CREDENTIALS 

Lesley Hunter

Since leaving full-time public sector employment, aged 34, Lesley has owned and managed numerous businesses. In her first entrepreneurial venture, she was founder and managing director of an educational inspection, training and consultancy business that grew to 120 staff and £1 million turnover in 5 years. Building on her experience in the education sector, she bought and transformed a warehouse into a vocational training centre for disaffected teenagers and also established a consultancy that provided educational advice to major UK constructions firms engaged in PFI school build initiatives. Through diversification, and capitalising on her property investments overseas, Lesley has also owned and managed a travel agency franchise that specialised in the Florida villa rentals and attractions. Lesley has third sector experience from her role as a Trustee in a welfare and advisory charity and has successfully acquired funding for a number of projects that have benefited her local community. She also established a business networking group to support women across the North East, which ultimately led to the creation of a training centre offering programmes accredited through the Institute of Leadership & Management.

Susan Laing

Susan has recently stepped down as Dean for Teesside University Business School to allow her to focus on her two passions – to further the enterprise agenda and help businesses grow, She was appointed as Dean in June 2017 to relaunch the School and has grown the income by 62% to approaching £12.5mn and increasing student numbers by over 50% to July 2020. 

Prior to Teesside, Susan spent more than twenty five years at Edinburgh Napier University where she created a track record of leading innovative courses and ways to deliver learning for those employed. 

BARBARA MCCRORY 

After leaving Tesco where Barbara worked as a trading director she set up Transform Business and Training Consulting Ltd. Barbara noticed a gap in the market for basic sound business development and training advice and has worked with some key clients both big and small.  Transform works across industries and with government agencies and trade bodies. She started with the larger companies such as Mars, Unilever, Heineken, Dolmio, Flora, Walkers, Hellmans and transcended to working with SME’s since 2012 mainly on request from interested parties.  

JOHN PARKER

John Parker has started, run and sold a number of small businesses in his time, taking turnover to, in one case, just under £1m. He has been central to the start up, running, turnaround and sale of businesses in his profession, which is executive education and key people development. 

During this time, John has achieved a number of accolades. He won the award for Small Business Trainer of the Year from the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative and a number of programmes for which he was leader or a principal have won UK and Scottish Training Awards. Amongst these programmes was Prosper, an end-to-end business programme that sought to develop business leaders and their businesses through a process including action learning, online learning and personal coaching.  

Another award winning programme on which John has had a key leadership role since 1999 is the Premier Adviser programme. This involved the development and accreditation of all business advisers in Scotland, over 1000 to date, encouraging them to support businesses to survive, thrive and prosper. 

John’s style is uses a combination of executive coaching and practical discussions and suggestions, aimed at focusing on achieving impacts in and for businesses through their leaders. He challenges people to examine new ideas, look at things from different angles and, above all, he supports them in achieving the outcomes that they need and desire for themselves.  

John also works in partnership with a number of delivery bodies. In doing so, he brings his approach to workplace based, achievement focused coaching and delivery in what can otherwise be more traditional settings.

John was appointed Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University in 2005. This was bestowed due to his ability to work with entrepreneurs and their supporters in achieving significant results in business.