Speakers
Elizabeth Gooch
Founder and CEO
eg solutions
In 2007, Elizabeth was recognised for her great success and entrepreneurship, being nominated semi-finalist in Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, where she was invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by the Queen for successful business women. Elizabeth has gone from strength to strength, featuring in Management Today's 'Britain's Top 100 Entrepreneurs' and more recently, being short-listed for the First Women Awards. (http://fwa.realbusiness.co.uk/page/Shortlist)
Elizabeth was brought up in Staffordshire and started her career in the 1980s as an in-house consultant at Forward Trust, a subsidiary of Midland Bank. In the role of work study engineer, Elizabeth found powerful arguments for change ignored by people who simply didn't have the time to see them as relevant to their jobs, even though they would have made a real difference to them. Elizabeth set up eg solutions in 1988 aged 26, after being frustrated with working in a number of high profile financial services companies, which she felt were not run efficiently and knew she could do a better job. She did not come from an entrepreneurial background and decided not to attend university as she wanted to earn money and couldn't wait another three years.
The company itself helps to improve operations management in financial services companies. eg solutions works with some prestigious financial services companies including Co-operative Financial Services and Royal & Sun Alliance.
David Lester
Chairman
Crimson Business
David Lester worked as a journalist, then qualified as a Chartered Accountant before becoming an entrepreneur. He founded and built a consumer software company which grew substantially and was sold in 1995. Since then he has founded Crimson Business, the UK's leading provider of quality information for UK SME's which includes startups.co.uk. In addition David has co-founded a fast-growing retail business, a recruitment business and Crimson Publishing, a book publishing business.
David has also invested in other medium-sized businesses ranging from distribution to mail order, technology and functional foods; he sits on the board of several of these companies and is an investor in several venture capital funds. David has edited one business book, How They Started and has written a second, Starting Your Own Business: The Good, The Bad and the Unexpected.
James Hurley
Editor
Growing Business magazine
James is the editor of Growing Business magazine and Growingbusiness.co.uk.
He previously worked as an editor and business journalist covering small and mid-sized companies for UK, US and Canadian publications and has interviewed an array of entrepreneurs and business leaders
He has also written for a number of consumer magazines, including music, film and lifestyle titles.
Tom Ilube
Founder
Garlik
Tom Ilube is Chief Executive Officer of Garlik (www.garlik.com), a new consumer company pioneering a range of services to help give people real power over their personal information in the digital world, using semantic web technologies.
Until recently Tom Ilube was Chief Information Officer of the world's largest pure online bank, Egg plc and a member of the Executive Committee. In 2005 Tom left Egg plc to found Garlik, in partnership with Mike Harris, the Founding CEO of Egg plc and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University. Egg plc was launched in 1998 and Tom was the original Launch Programme Manager. Today Egg is one of the worlds largest and most innovative online banks with over 4 million customers.
Prior to this role, Tom was Chief Executive of Lost Wax for six years, a software company that he founded in 1996. The company was recognised as one of the UK's most innovative technology firms, being listed as a top technology firm by The Sunday Times, Computing Magazine, Real Business and others.
Tom's technology career spans 20 years with a range of blue chip organisations including Goldman Sachs, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, The London Stock Exchange, Cap Gemini and British Airways. Garlik was selected as 2008 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Davos.
Emma Roffey
Head of SMB Marketing in Europe
Cisco Systems
As the head of European SMB marketing for Cisco, Emma is well aware of the issues facing growing businesses in a changing economy.
Joining Cisco in 2003, Emma was initially involved in the company's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) operation, with responsibility for Cisco's sales and marketing contact centres. Garnering a number of awards along the way, Emma became Cisco's CRM manager for Europe in 2006, before taking up her current role in April this year.
"Ask the owners of the majority of small and medium businesses about what they want their company to be, and the answer is usually 'bigger'", says Emma. "Managing that successfully however, is one of the greatest challenges that an SMB owner will face. In many ways, it can be just as tough as setting a business up in the first place. Surviving the challenges that come with growth needs careful planning and expert advice, which is why we're delighted to be sponsoring this webinar."
Prior to joining Cisco, Emma also enjoyed roles as the Director of Sales for an SMB data company, Senior Vice President of Commerce for a pan-European B2B marketplace site and as the Publishing Director of industry magazine IT Week.