THE timeworn proverb, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, could have been coined for Sarah Green.
The North-east regional director of the CBI has worked in several exotic locations including China’s sprawling Shanghai and cash-rich Hong Kong.
But because her heart is embedded in the North-east of England that shaped her, she ditched her high-flying solicitor’s job in Asia and began the journey back to the place she’ll always call home.
“I was like a homing pigeon”, she says.
“I just felt that there was maybe something worth coming back for.
“I think this region has got a strong identity, it’s a part of its heritage.
“Sometimes our pride gets in the way and we are a bit insular in our outlook.
“But as a region we are like a big family - we fight our corner and for each other.”
She includes Teesside in this set up, even though her roots are firmly embedded in Tyneside.
Born in Whickham, she currently resides in the leafy suburb of affluent Jesmond - a world away from the earthy, working class culture of Middlesbrough or Redcar.
But Green maintains that the region depends on Teesside for many things, not least the wealth pouring out of its vast, sprawling process industry - a major player in a £10bn-plus industry accounting for 30% of region’s industrial base.
She also points to a flourishing biotech industry on Teesside and praises the ambition of regeneration chiefs driving a 25-year gameplan to create a digital super-cluster in Middlesbrough.
With her CBI hat on, Green is lobbying on behalf of all industries.
But she’s fighting hard for manufacturers in particular and is concerned that the sector is suffering due to Government reform of the electricity market.
She wants energy-intensive firms to be exempt from the controversial carbon price floor, which from 2013 will impose hefty financial penalties on high-volume carbon emitters.
Companies with huge operations on Teesside, including petrochemical giant SABIC and Indian-owned Tata Steel, say the move will ramp up their energy bills by 20%.
And Green is worried it could force firms to move to more favourable tax regimes in other countries, driving away vital jobs and wealth.
“The process industries are underpinning £880bn of economic activity in the UK,” she says.
“Fifteen per cent of UK exports come from the chemicals industry and it’s one of the only sectors we have with a positive balance of payment.
“It’s a critical sector that we need to understand better if we are to push forward with the re-balancing of our economy.”
She talks a good game - but she’s had to be a good listener, too.
In her day job she acts as a sounding board for stressed-out owner-managers whose concerns vary from the colour of their marketing literature to cashflow and the affordability of bank loans.
These conversations give her the variety she craves in her career, with no two days ever the same.
Her entire working life has been punctuated by unorthodoxy, her kaleidoscopic CV peppered with a colourful mix of academic qualifications and varied roles in the legal, social economics and regeneration sectors.
After completing a law degree she qualified as a solicitor at Clifford Chance, working for its Shanghai and Hong Kong operations before branching into communications work at global accountancy giant Arthur Andersen Consulting.
She eventually returned to the North-east, completing an MSc in urban regeneration while taking on communications work for the now doomed development agency One North East.
She took time out in 2005 to have her first child, Jemima, before the CBI came calling the following year.
When she’s not talking up Teesside for the business lobby group, she’s handing out advice as a non-executive director of Durham regeneration specialist Four Housing Group.
She’s also involved in education networking group Schools NorthEast and has been appointed a visiting fellow of Newcastle University.
But it’s her day-job that really sets her pulses racing.
“Every day I can be the curious kid asking people about their businesses,” she says.
“I wouldn’t swap it for the world.”