Stuart Hendry - Chair Business Forum East

Stuart Hendry is a Partner in commercial law firm, MBM Commercial LLP and specialises in working with entrepreneurs, investors and high growth companies. Key areas of work include corporate finance (especially with business angel investments), business start ups and intellectual property.

Gareth Magee

Gareth Magee is a partner with Scott-Moncrieff and specialises in advising owner managed businesses, with a particular interest in early stage, high growth, and angel-invested businesses.  Gareth works closely with the Scottish Universities, the leading angel syndicates, LINC and other support organisations and is regularly appointed to lead companies through the start up, commercialisation and fundraising process. As a chartered accountant with over 20 years experience, Gareth has a wealth of expertise in this field and is a regular lecturer on commercialisation, spin-outs and angel investment at both Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt Universities.

Liza Sutherland

Liza Sutherland is a business advisor with Innovation Centres Scotland, one of Scotland's leading technology start-up incubator organisations, where she is responsible for advising a number of innovative and high-growth companies on their strategy, business models, marketing, sales and funding activities. Previously in her native New York, she successfully co-founded and directed two companies in the music industry from 1995 to 2002.

Luke Rodwell

Luke Rodwell has a BSc in Command, Control, Communications and Information Systems from The Royal Military College of Science. Before moving into the recruitment industry he was a Major in the British Army, where he served with both the Airborne and Commando forces in Iraq, USA, Africa, Europe and the UK.  After working with a multinational recruitment agency in London and an Executive Search company in Scotland Luke established Talent Focus (www.talentfocus.co.uk) in 2010.  Talent Focus is a Recruitment and Talent Management organisation which works in partnership with clients including start-up ventures, SME's, listed companies and the public sector.

Stephen Westwood

Stephen Westwood is the founder and proprietor of Stephen Westwood Consulting, which specialises in working with businesses to deliver success in building value and realising value.

He is a highly experienced businessman with a track record of over 20 years of achievements of delivering success. This has been for businesses at all stages of the life cycle, including start-ups, growing established businesses organically and by acquisition, reshaping and refocusing established businesses, undertaking fundamental change, and realising value by trade sales.

He has particular strengths in transacting commercial deals, fund-raising in both the public and private markets, and in developing and managing people to succeed. One of the many services available is coaching and training for success for organisations, teams and individuals.

While Stephen delivers all the services directly, he also has an extensive network of advisors covering all aspects of commercial activity, who can provide complementary specialist expertise as may be required for an engagement.

Kate MacInnes

Kate MacInnes works with the Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept Programme which is the funding programme to commercialise the world leading technologies from our academic base. The aim is to create more high growth businesses in Scotland or to license leading technologies to the Scottish company base to enable them to drive ambitious growth in global markets.

Prior to joining the team she was Project Manager at the Scottish Executive in the International Projects Division working on Scotland's international marketing. Kate was with Scottish Business Insider for ten years as Director of the corporate communications division which specialised in developing strategic communications and marketing platforms for companies and public sector organisations. In 2006 she co-authored a major report for World Association of Newspapers on outsourcing in the newspaper industry. She has been a mentor for PSYBT advising several young companies since 2004 and is an entrepreneur – world-famous Mamma's Pizza in Edinburgh's Grassmarket was founded by Kate (and partners)!