Be the Business team
The Be the Business team all have one thing in common – they want to help you unleash the true potential of small and medium-sized companies and make Britain the economic powerhouse we all know it can be. However, with many strings to the Be the Business bow, they’ve each shared the key parts of their roles so you can see how our productivity mission comes together.
Helen Wright
CFO
Helen keeps the boat afloat by looking after our people and overseeing all the money that flows in and out of Be the Business. She focuses on building good processes and problem solving with the team to make things happen, all to ensure we put our funding to best use.
Adam Hardy
Head of evaluation and insights
Adam’s focus lies in understanding what works, why and how. Whether that’s running surveys of SMEs or managing trials of our programmes to evaluate their success, he’s committed to getting to the bottom of the needs of small firms and how each can benefit from the range of our interventions.
Mark O'Mahoney
Senior communications manager
Mark is part of our communications team and loves working with the large and small businesses that are part of the Be the Business mission to help them tell their productivity stories through a variety of channels.
Helen Puddefoot
Director of strategic partnerships
Sally leads our strategic partnership team with the mission of bringing the resources of the private sector to support businesses improve productivity. Our corporate partners play a critical role in developing targeted technology and skills programmes to drive performance.
Hunter Ruthven
Senior content manager
With the real-life experiences of businesses around the UK one of the most important ways leaders can learn from each other, Hunter spends most of his time bringing together inspiring stories. If he’s not doing a podcast recording with a meringue maker in Birmingham he’ll be writing about a barbershop chain in London.
Bryce Worth
Partnerships manager
Coming from a startup background, Bryce is used to working in managed chaos to build and scale businesses. He works with several of our tech and defence sector partners to figure out creative ways to generate win-win opportunities for corporates and small businesses.
Lilli McGeehan
Partnerships manager
Lilli works with our corporate partners to shape their contributions, build new programmes and guide innovative approaches to solving our big challenges. She’s also passionate about advancing our technology adoption work and developing relationships with a wide range of organisations to build a force for good.
Carla King-Molina
Communications and marketing executive
Carla is a key part of the creation and delivery of campaigns. She’s also a bit of a numbers nerd, with endless appetite for using big data to bring small business stories to life. She also leads on all things social media here at Be the Business – so, if you slide into our DMs, she’ll be on the other side.
Emma Cooper
Strategic operations lead
Emma likes to make stuff happen. She works across teams in the organisation to find solutions to shared problems, bring new ideas to life and to connect the dots between activities. One day she’ll be working on how to measure the “productivity movement”, another on how to build a regional partnership.
Rebecca Clifton
Mentoring lead
Whether managing through uncertainty, crisis or taking your business to the next level, an independent mentor is a vital source of support. Rebecca leads our mentoring programme, which connects SME leaders with mentors from corporate organisations.
Tom Gibson
Head of digital and tech adoption programmes
Tom oversees our programmes that help leaders use technology to improve performance. This means spending time listening to the challenges faced and then designing the right interventions. He also leads digital development, which means doing his very best to practice what he preaches in the other part of his job.
Paloma Sackman
Head of leadership and management programmes
In every small business across the UK there are owners and staff passionate about success and driven to push progress forward. Paloma supports these individuals and their organisations to thrive through a diverse set of leadership and management programmes.
Sheena McDermott
Networks and innovation lead
Sheena is responsible for finding ways to get businesses sharing insight, running our advisory boards and peer learning programmes – anything that gets people talking. She’s a big fan of family businesses and loves hearing the stories that weave through the DNA of family firms.
Anthony Impey
CEO
Anthony is always looking to apply his skills as an entrepreneur to find opportunities for us to innovate and grow so that we can help even more businesses transform their productivity. He spends his days talking with the leaders of large and small businesses to ensure that we always do the things that help boost their performance.
James Gribben
Head of communications
James works to get the message out about Be the Business. Depending on what day it is, you can find him devising and delivering agenda-setting thought leadership, running campaigns that get people talking or bringing stories about inspirational business leaders to national attention.
Eleanor Roots
Content creator
Got some content that needs writing? Look no further! When she’s not correcting (maybe judging) your grammar or seeking out wayward typos, Eleanor is busy devising, researching and typing top-notch pieces on all things business.
Matt Bright
Communications and marketing director
Matt works with his team to make sure we are communicating with the outside world as effectively and creatively as possible, whether that’s through campaigns, media mentions, marketing our programmes and products, social media content, or talking to government and policy makers.
Fiona Krasniqi
Policy and public affairs manager
Fiona leads on our public affairs and policy efforts. From ensuring we engage with MPs and Whitehall, to planning events that put the SME experience front and centre, she helps give SMEs a voice where it matters.
Denica Lundberg
Partnerships manager
Denica views the world in Venn diagrams and is always looking for the perfect win-win collaboration. Her work with corporate partners to diffuse good practice to SMEs is focused on boosting productivity and driving economic recovery.
Anna Drummond
Partnerships manager
Anna’s job is all about finding the sweet spot where a partnership with us helps unlock a corporate’s strategic goals and benefits SMEs across the UK – be that sponsoring a mini-MBA programme or providing a cohort of colleagues to become SME mentors.
Helen Wilson
Talent manager
Helen’s role is to support the BtB team to be the best it can be – it’s a varied and busy role that encompasses staff wellbeing, recruitment of new team members, identifying training needs and ensuring our internal processes are setting us up for success.
Josh Sheppard
Evaluation and insights manager
Josh has conducted several pieces of important research, in particular on the impact of coronavirus on businesses. He has also worked closely with corporate partners on a number of projects, including how we can understand more about UK’s productivity challenges.
Annie Olivier
Networks and innovation project manager
Annie supports the design and delivery of programmes that get business leaders working together and sharing their expertise. She also leads on diversity and inclusion at Be the Business and is focused on empowering business leaders who may be facing systemic barriers to their success.