President
Dave Bolton, Director of Enterprise and Employability and Programme Director, Swansea School of Management
Dave Bolton is a Fellow of the IEEP, Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and of the Higher Education Academy. Having spent in excess of 20 years working in private industry, mainly in the fields of sales and marketing management, he decided to move into entrepreneurship setting up a successful electrical contracting business, as well as entering academia where he currently works in Swansea School of Management He is currently Director of Enterprise and Employability and Programme Director for the School of Management’s BSc Business Management undergraduates. In his spare time David enjoys cycling, running, reading and as a passionate Welshman, rugby.
Past President
Vice President
Megan has extensive commercial and entrepreneurial experience and has recently opened the Dryden Enterprise Centre which houses start-up, high growth and innovation driven SME’s, University spin outs, student and graduate businesses.
Megan’s work spans curriculum, extra curriculum, Start-up, Growth and Scaling businesses, investment and placemaking and over the years has worked with the British Council and NESTA across developing countries to support entrepreneurs and government agencies to understand the importance of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the growth of local economies. She has recently taken up the positions of Vice President of Enterprise Educators UK working for national and international members to drive change in enterprise education and as Vice Chair of the Nottingham Business Improvement District to support the local economic development agenda.
Finance Director
Steve is responsible for the development of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cardiff Metropolitan University. The Centre provides start-up support, extracurricular enterprise activity as well as supporting the implementation of Enterprise Education within the curriculum.
As a graduate entrepreneur himself Steve founded and ran a number of successful businesses over 16 years before taking up an enterprise support role. As a key influencer both within Cardiff Met and in the wider Welsh entrepreneurship ecosystem he is interested in ensuring that the economic benefits of graduate start-up activity are both realised and recognised.
Steve has been an active supporter of EEUK, hosting two Enterprise Exchange events at Cardiff Met and being the recipient of a Richard Beresford Bursary.
Dr Cherisse Hoyte
Director
Curriculum Lead (Associate Professor) Entrepreneurship, Coventry University
Cherisse is Curriculum Lead (Head of Subject for Entrepreneurship) within the School of Marketing and Management at Coventry University. She oversees the operational development of enterprise skills and entrepreneurship education for the Faculty of Business and Law.
Cherisse is passionate about giving a voice to those in marginalised communities who still do not have access to enterprise and entrepreneurship education. She works on international projects supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship education across Europe, East Africa and South-East Asia. Her expertise is in curriculum transformation, online course development and innovative pedagogic approaches to embedding entrepreneurialism in the curriculum.
Cherisse actively teaches at undergraduate level on entrepreneurial mind-set and ideation; and on Degree Apprenticeships, bringing a focus to intrapreneurship and innovation in the public sector. Her own entrepreneurship research is on new venture creation and the cognitive and socio-material processes aspiring entrepreneurs experience as they navigate the boundaries between venture ideas and venture formation.
She enjoys travelling to Thailand to support enterprise and entrepreneurship education as a start-up coach/mentor for the Global Entrepreneurship Camp run by Suranaree University of Technology. She also enjoys taking Maximus, her German shepherd dog, on long walks.
Director
Director
Lecturer for Entrepreneurship, The Open University
Director
Employer & Engagement Officer, University of Westminster
Jennie has worked within WeNetwork at the University of Westminster leading on Employer Engagement for the last couple of years within the University’s Business Engagement Directorate integrating business practices within enterprise education.
Jennie leads on prospecting businesses within the Enterprise landscape and developing collaborations that will enhance the learning experience and employability of Westminster students. Jennie has championed diversity and inclusion in her employer engagement strategies developing partnerships with diverse employers and founders to facilitate experiential learning activities. Addressing the barriers to employment and enterprise faced by Westminster’s diverse community of students and graduates.
Jennie has experience supporting the broader community of colleagues in her work with University’s Employability Board and in securing founders and employers to participate in course validation processes.
Jennie is passionate about enabling soft skills development so students have the confidence to engage and network with business and employers to raise their profiles so that, when they graduate, they are secure and confident in talking about their personal or business brand.
With a background in the creative/media sector and business development her work is in collections at the V&A Museum, The National Portrait Gallery & The Black Cultural Archives. Jennie has also been a guest speaker on creative industries issues at a range of events including City Hall, the Home Office, The V&A, Tate Britain, The Institute of Jamaica and Kingston University.
Director
Director
Associate Dean of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise at University of the Arts London
Marcus O’Dair is a writer, consultant and academic with an interest in enterprise education and innovation management. During a decade in the music and media industries, he released four acclaimed albums as one half of Grasscut and performed across Europe at venues including the Pompidou Centre and the Royal Albert Hall. He also contributed to various broadsheet newspapers and wrote a biography that was a book of the week on BBC Radio 4. He then moved into academia and is currently Associate Dean of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise at University of the Arts London. He has run creative entrepreneurship programmes around the world for organisations including the British Council and is currently UAL lead on a £900,000 project supporting entrepreneurship among student studying creative subjects.
Director
Senior Enterprise Consultant at UWE Bristol
Mhairi is the Senior Enterprise Consultant at UWE Bristol. She was the entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Bristol before joining UWE Bristol in 2011 to establish and build their extracurricular entrepreneurship activity. Over the past ten years, she has worked to grow the team and now leads on the development of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the curriculum. Throughout her time at UWE, Mhairi has worked with a range of institutions to share best practice on enterprise, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in countries including Morocco, South Korea, Iceland, Kenya, Ukraine and Georgia. In the UK, she has worked on a range of projects including Goodlab (a project to connect social entrepreneurs and academics), feeding into the development of enterprise and entrepreneurship policies and sharing her work on applying the EntreComp Framework at UWE Bristol. She has also held various positions as a Bristol city councillor, trustee and school governor and sat as a director of Bristol is Open, a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol to develop a ‘test-bed’ programmable, digital infrastructure. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and currently sits on the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) task group for enterprise and entrepreneurship. Her research interests include neurodiversity and entrepreneurship, social enterprise and impact, policy ontology and person-centred teaching.
Director
Director
Entrepreneurship Officer, Bridgend College
Ruth is a multi-award-winning enterprise educator and EEUK Fellow who has been championing Entrepreneurship at Bridgend College since 2010. As a business adviser before taking up her current post, she specialized in supporting start–ups and managed the acclaimed Women into Business programme. Her wide-ranging qualifications include an IEEP Fellowship and an MA in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education.
Alongside her role, Ruth was a trustee of the Fairwood Trust, a charity supporting disadvantaged young people to fulfil their potential through education and enterprise, for ten years a Bridgend College governor for four years and a member of the EWC’s Fitness to Practice team. In her spare time, Ruth enjoys reading, cooking and going to the theatre. She also plays tennis every week and hopes her enthusiasm makes up for her lack of talent.