Claire Byers
As deputy director for Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Claire Byers has specific responsibility for leading the strategic development of Baltic through external relations, brand development and communications, development and fundraising, trading and public-facing activities (eg, restaurant, cafe, retail, corporate and private hires).
Claire has also been responsible for writing Baltic’s business plan supporting a new vision statement, and developing the new core values and brand culture that underpin both.
Claire has been with Baltic for four-and-a-half years, but previously, in a career spanning over 25 years (much of it spent within the North East), she has held roles of influence across a wide range of cultural and creative disciplines as well as in highly-competitive consumer markets. Her career includes contributing significantly to cultural policy and development across all art forms and disciplines at regional level as head of external relations culture for One North East (ONE), the regional development agency for the North East. As such she was also a member of the Newcastle Gateshead Capital of Culture bid executive team.
She later went on to establish the regional design strategy as innovation and design futures manager for ONE and was instrumental in the region winning the first ever national design biennial Dott07.
Other interesting roles also include regional director for the Royal Institute of British Architects for the North East and Cumbria, heading up tourism, culture, sport and leisure for Berwick Borough Council, and publicity and marketing roles for national housebuilder Bellway and international fishing tackle manufacturer House of Hardy Ltd in Alnwick.
Claire is widely connected within the creative and design worlds, and as a particular champion of service design she is a respected voice in developing service excellence and innovation in service-based environments.
Fiona Cruickshank
A successful entrepreneur, Fiona is a leading business figure and a former North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. Committed to supporting North East England’s local knowledge economy, Fiona is a business mentor at Durham University, an ambassador for the international One North East campaign and a former David Goldman Visiting Professor of Business Innovation at Newcastle University Business School.
In June 2010, she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to business in the North East.
Fiona has enjoyed an extensive career in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning more than 20 years since graduating from the London University School of Pharmacy in the late 80s. Before setting up The Specials Laboratory in 1999 and later SCM Pharma in 2004, she worked around the UK in community pharmacies, hospitals and industry. She is a registered pharmacist and has expert knowledge in the field of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Still a registered pharmacist, Fiona’s current role as a non-executive director at SCM Pharma involves her supporting the board on strategic aspects such as the long-term vision for the company, brand communications, alliances and breaking into new markets.
Fiona is also an active volunteer business adviser for Young Enterprise North East and a member of the advisory board at Newcastle University Business School. In 2010, she was appointed as a trustee of the North Music Trust to help assist The Sage Gateshead in achieving its mission of becoming an international home for music and musical discovery with local roots.
Sara Davies
Sara Davies has been designing, manufacturing and retailing tools and materials for crafters for six years. The founder of Crafter’s Companion, she was chosen by her peers to win the Entrepreneurs’ Forum’s Emerging Talent of the Year award 2011.
Based in her home town of Bishop Auckland, Sara and her father have developed innovative products like the Enveloper, the Ultimate Pro and Rock-a-Blocks that have revolutionised papercrafting and won numerous accolades.
The company, which has a US branch based in Florida, also retails products under licence featuring popular characters like Beatrix Potter and the Flower Fairies.
Sara started the business when she was at university.
She took a year out working for a small craft business against the wished of the university which was keen to place students with large businesses.
She effectively saved that business and turned it round and at the same gathered some key insights into the craft market.
With the support of her father, she engineered her first product and secured a major order from the leading craft TV channel – but the paperwork never materialised, leaving her with £30,000 of stock produced by a local engineering business (and a friend of the family) without any way to pay!
Thankfully, although her feature on the channel was reduced to a five-minute slot at the end of each hour, she sold 6,000 products by the end of the first hour.
Next question from the channel – could they double the order!
At this time Sara was running the business from her bedroom at university with her best friend’s mum back in the village fulfilling orders. From the time Sara was 14 she’d always said that when Sara started a business, she’d love to work for her.
Even though she was running a growing business Sara still managed to come away with a first from York University and was actually the top student in her year.
The business has gone from strength to strength and thanks to Sara’s incredible insight into the craft market has consistently developed and produced award-winning, market-leading products.
Global HQ is still based in Sara’s home village of Coundon in County Durham.
And as Sara travels the world promoting the Crafter’s Companion – her passion and belief in the products is the key to their success on craft TV channels – there’s a real family feel to the business.
Sara is a true entrepreneur, always looking for the next opportunity and striving to be the best in her industry. She’ll come up with a new idea at 9am and by midday it’s being implemented.
Helen Fraser
Helen Fraser is chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), the leading network of independent girls’ schools in the UK, with a network of 24 schools and two academies in England and Wales, including Central Newcastle High School, and it aims to be the leader in girls’ education.
Helen was educated at the Lycee in London and Collegiate Girls’ School, a Leicester grammar school. She won a scholarship to Oxford University and graduated with a first in English language and literature in 1970. After university she taught English in Paris for a year and then travelled in India and south east Asia before starting her first job in publishing at Methuen Academic. After two years she left to work for a small start-up publisher, Open Books. In 1977 she moved to William Collins, where she worked for 10 years, during which she continued to publish academic titles but also broadened her publishing to include literary fiction and more general non-fiction.
In 1987 she moved to William Heinemann as publisher, and stayed with the Reed Elsevier group for 10 years, eventually as managing director of Reed Consumer Books.
In 1997 Helen joined Penguin as managing director. During her 13 years at the helm there she signed up diverse authors such as Zadie Smith, Antony Beevor and Jamie Oliver, led Penguin authors to win the Booker, Whitbread and Orange prizes in a single year, and won Publisher of the Year twice. She received a CBE in the New Year’s Honours list in January 2010, the same month she joined the GDST.
Kim Inglis
A freelance journalist since January 2009, Kim works freelance for the BBC, SKY News, ITV and a number of web channels including www.lakestv.net
Kim also presents Gilly & Kim Let Loose on BBC Radio Cumbria with fellow broadcaster and journalist Gilly Fraser.
A well-known event and conference host, Kim works for a number of businesses, charities and other organisations including the NHS, the Prince’s Trust and Young Enterprise. Kim also presents corporate films and supplies voiceovers.
Kim works in schools and colleges as a creative practitioner on a range of literacy and communication projects, explaining the world of journalism and the workings of TV news.
She left Manchester University in 1993 with a joint honours degree in French and Italian and joined Border Television in Carlisle. She was trained there in all aspects of journalism and worked as a reporter and presenter.
In 1995 Kim moved to ITV Tyne Tees in Newcastle. She worked there for more than 13 years as a reporter and presenter in the newsroom, fronting the flagship 6pm programme as well as all the other news bulletins, reporting live on the road and producing high-quality news reports.
In addition to Kim’s credentials as an experienced broadcast journalist, she has presented a host of non-news programmes including Wild North, Raw Chefs, Property Matters, All Aboard for Love, Call Dr Jane and Past Crimes.
Kim has made a number of network appearances, including live inserts into the national ITV news and presenting This Morning on ITV1 with Philip Schofield.
Sharon Mavin
Sharon Mavin is the dean of Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University and is currently responsible for the strategic leadership and general management of a £26m business school with 200 staff and more than 6,000 students.
Dr Mavin is also professor of organisation and HRM and was previously associate dean research, responsible for research, academic development, funded and contract projects, PhD, DBA, DBL programmes, the Graduate Tutor programme and leading the research management team.
She also held the role of programme director management programmes, leading the postgraduate part-time MBA, MA management studies and diploma in management studies and before that, led the CIPD accredited MA HRM and PG Dip in HRM and development.
A fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Dr Mavin is a member of CIPD national committees and is vice-chairwoman of the University Forum for HRD, leading on practitioner and organisational activities. Sharon is a member of the ABS and BAM national research committees and active in the ABS/BAM directors of research development programme.
Her applied research and consultancy expertise is found in senior leadership, gender issues of organisation, management development, organisational behaviour and development, innovation and the social architecture, HRM, individual and organisational learning and diversity issues.
She is an executive coach and engages as an adviser and consultant with leading organisations from the multi-national, UK charitable, commercial, SME and public sectors.
She is delivering a two-year HEFCE leadership and governance funded project on evaluating training and development in UK universities.
Dr Mavin has an international reputation for women leaders and women in management research with recent work concerning female misogyny and gendered media constructions of women leaders receiving international attention. Previously European editor of the Learning Organisation: An International Journal, she is incoming co-editor of Gender in Management: An International Journal; is an active referee for international journals and conferences and has delivered numerous international conference papers and publications.
Sue Sim
Sue Sim joined Northumbria Police in 2004 and is the chief constable, the force’s first ever female chief.
She joined the force as an assistant chief constable, and was promoted to deputy chief constable in July 2008.
During her year-long stint as temporary chief constable, Mrs Sim headed up the Raoul Moat investigation.
She moved to Northumbria after 19 years with Merseyside Police where she gained extensive experience in both uniform and criminal investigation roles.
In 1997 Mrs Sim was promoted to superintendent and took responsibility for the introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act throughout Merseyside.
In 1998 she became the area commander for South Sefton where she had responsibility for Ashworth High Security Hospital and was operational commander for the judicial review and hunger strike of Ian Brady.
In addition Mrs Sim has also been operational commander for two Grand Nationals.
Mrs Sim, who has two daughters, was promoted to chief superintendent in 2002 and took command of the crime operations unit which included major incident teams.
During 2003 Mrs Sim worked with HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and was responsible for the inspection of area commands throughout England and Wales.
Following this secondment Mrs Sim returned to Merseyside Police to become head of community relations with responsibility for implementing the race equality scheme.