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Who We Are

Dr Barbara McCrory

Barbara has over 30 years in the field of business at Director level. She currently holds a number of roles including: Founder of Transform Business Consultancy a company set up to assist companies tranform their business. She is also a Lecturer with Edinburgh Napier University and Teesside University and holds the position of Associate Director with Cormack Consulting Group who facilitate business internationally, helping companies develop and grow globally. She is also a trainer and advisor in business development for Scottish Development International and Ayrshire Council and has recently completed a large mentoring programme for businesses across Northern Ireland for Invest Northern Ireland. She has been active in accelerator programmes for businesses across Scotland with Scottish Enterprise.

 

She holds a Doctorate in Business, an MBA in Business and a Degree in Marketing and has completed courses in Mentoring and Coaching.

 

Her workshops, training and lecture topics are: Entrepreneurial Leadership, Productivity through People, Motivation, Managing Change, Business Development, Sales, Target setting, Growth and Strategy development, Managing Millennials (understanding the current generational muddle), Internationalisation, Negotiating to Win, Delivering Great Customer Service. How to Pitch your ideas both internally and externally, Making presentations that count, Overcoming Objections to your plans / strategies, Developing leaders of the future and Influencing skills.

 

Barbara is a visiting lecturer with the Stockholm School of Economics delivering lectures on Consumer Behaviour, and International Selling and Negotiations

She is also an invited speaker at European business conferences and seminars across topics such as “Internationalising your Business”, “Working in the UK Market”, “Managing Risk in Business” and “The UK Food and Drink industry”.

 

She started her trade with Tesco working her way up to Trading Director with a final responsibility for over £400 million sales and led a team of over 30 people.  Her career expanded into other areas such as General Manager, Commercial and Marketing Director for a number of different companies and across different industries. Her experience allows for a fuller understanding of leadership, management, business development,  procurement and exporting across large and small companies and across industries.

 

She also is a business consultant and has worked with some of the biggest brand names such as Mars, Masterfoods, Unilever, Dolmio, Heineken, Hellmans, Flora, Nivia, Walkers and Johnson Brothers.

 

Barbara is also a mentor for a number of companies with the Scottish Chamber of Commerce.

Her publications include: “Customer Retention through the equal incorporation of continuous improvement, culture and customer service” and “A holistic framework to embed good company practice for customer retention”.

Tom Marchbanks

Tom Marchbanks is an experienced consultant with over 20 years international business development experience having worked as a Diplomat for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Scottish Governments, delivering business advisory services to UK companies looking to grow through international trading. He has managed capacity building programmes such as the `Preparing to Export’ series of workshops on behalf of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and through his overseas appointments has managed trade service delivery teams in India, China and latterly (with Scottish Development International) in the Middle East.

 

Knowledge and Experience of International Business Advisory

 

Tom has a wealth of knowledge and insight into trade exhibitions/fairs; inbound and outbound market visits and associated programmes; the extensive range of services now offered by government support mechanisms and how to access the support on offer.

 

He has coached and advised numerous companies on their market entry strategies, provided support with market and cultural awareness preparation, supported them with planning in advance of, and during their market visits, and with subsequent follow-up.

 

Having led SDI’s High Growth Markets Unit, he oversaw the company assessment programme designed to help `new to export’ companies develop their Export Plans, including market awareness research and market analysis, prior to helping them prepare for their first export market visit. Specific F&D industry activities include.

 

  • Introducing the `Mrs. Bridges’ brand into the Indian market – leading on the production of an Overseas Market Information Report for MacKays (Arbroath) including facilitating meetings within the Indian food retail segment and hosting a product launch event.
  • Working with Highland Spring to identify an agent for the UAE and working with Dubai authorities to ensure labelling compliance and clearance of shipments.
  • Working with Tunnock’s to identify counterfeit products in the Saudi Arabian market.
  • Working with Braehead Foods Ltd to identify a suitable consolidator for UAE bound Scottish products.

 

Working collaboratively with Scottish partners such as Scotland Food & Drink, Scottish Seafood and Meat Scotland, Tom recruited a full-time co-funded specialist to support the F&D industry in the region and secured budget for, and led, a two-year local marketing campaign featuring activities such as:

 

  • Annual `Meet the Buyer’ showcase event in Scotland.
  • Twice-yearly `To the table’ promotional dinners in United Arab Emirates.

 

A Scottish pavilion at GulfFood (the world’s largest food and beverage trade show); flying over a Scottish chef for a full week of promotional and press activity including a gala reception, business luncheons, etc

Dr Susan Laing

Susan has recently retired as Dean of Teesside University Business School where she led the Business School to recreate a comprehensive, vibrant portfolio of relevant courses, and has developed a suite of relationships locally, regionally and internationally with businesses and other Universities and grown the fledging Business School to a multicultural, ambitious team of fifty strong academics. 

 

The key legacies she is most proud of as the leader of the School are: 

 

  • Growing student numbers by 50% and driving an increase in income by 67% over three years with a trajectory in place for further growth.
  • Building the requisite team for the Business School, who will take forward the vision and values.
  • Instilling a shared passion and ambition across the academic team to be civic in thinking, enterprising in attitude, collaborative in action and global in outlook.

 

Previously, Susan spent over twenty years at Edinburgh Napier University where she was the founding Director for the Centre for Entrepreneurship, a Subject Group Leader and Director for Executive Education.

 

Susan has / is an Adjunct Professor at Tai Poutini Polytechnic in New Zealand and a visiting Fellow at HAW Hamburg, and ECUST (East China University of Science and Technology), Shanghai, on the MBA programme.

 

Her specific areas of expertise are enterprise education, entrepreneurial leadership, and international new ventures (or born global businesses). Her academic standing has taken her to Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, Finland and New Zealand as a subject matter expert at an institutional level to design and deliver innovative enterprise curricula through novel interactive teaching to ensure the relevance and applicability of student learning.

 

At national level, Susan sits on the Board of Enterprise Educators (EE) UK, where she engages in strategy and policy discussions with regard to the enterprise agenda in higher education. In addition, Susan is an assessor for the Chartered Association of Business Schools Small Business Charter.

Jacqui Donnelly

Jacqui Donnelly FCIPD

Jacqui is a highly experienced and effective Change Consultant, and Coach, supporting Organisation and Leadership Development, Cultural Change and Business Improvement at multiple levels within organisations. With 25+ years’ experience as a HR Director supporting Executive teams to First Level Leaders, in team dynamics and personal leadership development, she is practical and pragmatic with a demonstrated track record.
A Team Coach she regularly works with teams in considering their strategic alignment, common purpose, community and stakeholder alignment, values driven change and team dynamics to deliver increased levels of employee engagement and bottom-line benefits.
In addition, she has undertaken significant business improvement activities, using practical Change Management methodologies, working across the UK, Europe and globally in complex environments associated with the pharmaceutical and consumer industry.
As a HR Director within GSK, she was responsible for setting the People Strategy. Engaging and empowering the in-country professional HR teams to determine local operational targets, signing off on objectives with appropriate targets, and measuring the progress achieved. Her focus was on motivating and embedding positive and consistent behaviours aligned to the Company values. Decision making on priorities for the HR function, and on broader business decisions, she was a Business Leader as well as an HR Director.
A qualified Coach and part of the award-winning team achieving the ICF International Prism Award for Excellence in Coaching 2016. In addition, she was a finalist with the Learning and Performance Institute for People Development in 2017.
Jacqui is a Chartered Fellow with CIPD with a Business Economics background and a qualified psychometric assessor. Her experience spans the Car, Packaging, Pharmaceutical and Consumer industries. Trained in Organisational Development and Culture Change she is a Team Coach with a Diploma in Coaching, a Green Belt in Lean Sigma and a qualified Mental Health First Aider.

John Patterson

John is a highly driven Business Leader with strong commercial acumen and extensive experience and expertise in business. He has developed a broad and transferable skillset, steering operations within blue chip engineering environments in alignment with core business objectives. Supports decision making processes in business direction, inclusive of strategic planning, execution, and reporting. Committed to promoting talent development, he is an ILM Level 7 accredited coach/mentor, with over 400 hours of co

His Areas of expertise include:
• Safety Culture & Processes
• Change Management
• Operational & Process Improvements
• Team Developing
• Lean Manufacturing
• Cultural Change Enablement
• Cost Savings & Reductions
• Business Strategy Planning & Execution
• Problem & Issue Resolution
• Reporting & audit
• Staff Training & Mentorship
• Relationship Management
• P&L Management
• Leadership & Management Development
• Training provider
• Executive coaching/mentoring,