Our Directors

  • Dave Bolton

    Finance Director and Company Secretary

    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.

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  • Dr Emily Beaumont

    President

    Academic Subject Lead for Strategy, Enterprise, Leadership and Management at the University of Gloucestershire
    Emily is Academic Subject Lead for Strategy, Enterprise, Leadership and Management at the University of Gloucestershire. Emily has a passion for enterprise and entrepreneurship education and has devoted her time in Higher Education to developing teaching and research in this discipline.  This has led to her being awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, and Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.  She also recently established and co-chairs the Research in Enterprise Education Special Interest Group, the first official partnership between the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and EEUK
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  • Emma Forouzan

    Director

    Emma Forouzan, Student Enterprise Manager, University of South Wales

    Emma manages the Student Enterprise Team within USW Careers and is responsible for leading and managing enterprise and entrepreneurship education activity across the University.

    Setting up her own business as a graduate, Emma has since helped 100’s of students/graduates to do the same.  This ignited 16 years of championing Enterprise and developing curricular/co-curricular programmes whilst forging partnerships across the enterprise eco-system.

    As a keen collaborator Emma chairs a country wide collaboration of 22 Welsh colleges and Universities to deliver an annual online start-up Week as a result of COVID-19 for which the Team won an NEEA in 2020.  Emma also instigated and managed the development of the ETC-Toolkit, to create a resource to support accessible subject specific enterprise resources which was later ‘gifted’ to EEUK.

    Emma holds a number of master-level degrees in enterprise/entrepreneurship, an IEEP fellowship and is an Edward De-Bono trained Creative Thinking Facilitator.

    LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/emma-forouzan-37a60439

    Twitter @EForouzan

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  • Gareth Trainer

    Former Chair

    Assistant Director (Enterprise and Entrepreneurship), Newcastle University

    Gareth joined Newcastle University in 2001, helping to establish the University’s enterprise and entrepreneurship support before leading the development of its Graduate Skills Framework. As Assistant Director of the University’s Careers Service, Gareth leads on enterprise and entrepreneurship strategy, chairs its Board of Studies, and oversees its enterprise education and start-up support functions. Gareth re-joined the EEUK Board in 2016 as Treasurer, having also served 2007-2010 when he was involved in creating the National Enterprise Educator Awards. Gareth is a Fellow of the RSA, a full member of AGCAS and co-developed the 2012 QAA guidance on Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education.

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  • Dr Inge Hill

    Director

    Royal Agricultural University

    Dr. Inge Hill works at the Royal Agricultural University, as Senior Lecturer and is strategic lead for the RAU for the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise, where she is a co-investigator. Inge is a former serial award winning service entrepreneur, successful start-up coach/mentor, and business growth consultant with successes on changing business models and increasing profits in sustainable ways. Her entrepreneurship research rooted in practice theory offers new insights into what entrepreneurs actually do to reduce start-up failures.
    Inge has been influencing enterprise education in the UK since 2003, as an academic teacher and business support practitioner creating thriving start-ups and influencing change in universities. For example, she has been mainstreaming self-employability into the curriculum across Birmingham City University. She advocates new venture creation skills as a core citizenship skill. Her book Start Up (Hill, 2015, http://bit.ly/Start-Up-IngeHill) is used worldwide.
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/dringehillstrategy/. She won the prestigious 2020 Experienced Teaching practitioner of the year award from the British Academy of Management with an innnovation on pop-up shops as learning tool.
    Inge is one of the assessors for the SBC Charter on behalf of Enterprise Educators UK and advises universities on how to improve the enterprise/entrepreneurship curricula and co-curricular offer.
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  • Dr Lauren Ellse

    Director

    Enterprise Adviser, University of Bristol

    Lauren had worked in Enterprise Education for four years after co-founding and running a business, based on her PhD and post-doctoral research.  She is motivated by supporting entrepreneurs and seeing potential realised. In her current role in the university’s Basecamp Enterprise Team, she co-ordinates and leads a programme of events, competitions, and opportunities to support students and graduates in developing their enterprising skills and supporting start-up founders. Lauren is particularly interested in improving the gender diversity of students engaging with enterprise education and championing the idea that enterprise and entrepreneurship are for everyone.

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  • Megan Powell Vreeswijk

    Director

    Head of Enterprise, Nottingham Trent University
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  • Dr Philip Clegg

    Vice President

    Head of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, University of Huddersfield

    Dr Philip Clegg is Head of Enterprise & Entrepreneurship with the University of Huddersfield’s Enterprise Team. Originally from a performing arts background, he worked exclusively as a self-employed musician for over 20 years before becoming passionately involved in enterprise education, and so has origins in entrepreneurial practice, prior to entering the HE environment.

    Now leading a team of business advisors, the Enterprise Team is located within the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre and feeds into the University’s clear commitment to support the development of enterprising global graduates; a commitment reflected in the University’s THE Entrepreneurial University of the Year and a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

    Philip’s particular special interest area of enterprise is Social Enterprise (SE), and having founded an externally facing SE Consultancy Unit in 2013, they operate to the ethos of an SE, utilising profits to enhance SE support to our own students and graduates. The model is supported by his Doctor of Enterprise research to establish a set of guidelines to move towards a sector-informed start-up support provision for social entrepreneurs. Philip has been an EEUK Board member since September 2016 and also Chairs the Graduate Entrepreneurship Network.

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  • Dr Richard Tunstall

    Director

    Associate Professor of Enterprise, Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Studies, University of Leeds. 
     
    I support students and educators across the university ecosystem as Academic Lead for the University of Leeds’ strategic student enterprise initiative. I have led a number of programmes at Leeds, including the globally ranked MSc Management and the UK’s first ‘With Enterprise’ inter-faculty BA minor programme.I have supported a range of enterprise activities, working closely with University of Leeds’ Spark business-startup unit, student enterprise societies and leading events such as the Leeds Climathon.  I work closely with SME leaders in executive education including as Section Lead for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Programme, and have designed and delivered courses for thousands of UG and PG students in face-to-face and online settings, building on my career both as an entrepreneurship academic and as a practitioner as project implementation and user-engagement manager at a fast-growth digital HR solutions startup in London during its flotation on AIM. 
     
    I work internationally supporting enterprise education and research, having chaired enterprise education curriculum reviews for the European Commission’s cross-discipline EIT programme to embed entrepreneurship education into initiatives to tackle global challenges, chaired the European Council of Small Business European Entrepreneurship Education conference, supporting PhD education development at the United States Association of Small Business Conference and as Co-Editor of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research.  My own research focusses on how perceptions and experience of executives influences the development of entrepreneurial projects in existing organisations and the role of social learning in developing entrepreneurship education ecosystems and programmes.
    In my spare time, I enjoy exploring the Yorkshire countryside with my young family, keeping fit and singing. 
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  • Steve Aicheler

    Director

    Entrepreneurship Manager, Cardiff Metropolitan University

    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.

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  • Will Pritchard

    Director

    Entrepreneur in Residence, Keele University

    Will has been in enterprise education for the past seven years, building on his entrepreneurial experience to develop a portfolio career in the sector. He has enjoyed working with 50+ educational institutions, primarily universities, across the UK, Middle East and Asia.

    He is an Associate of the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education, an Executive MBA candidate at Aston Business School and a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Particular interests include innovation, digital and ethical growth. In his spare time he runs an online community of 600+ social entrepreneurs and throws himself out of aeroplanes for fun.

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