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Professor Vicki Bruce OBE
Vicki Bruce is an expert on human face perception and person memory, including face recognition and recall by eye-witnesses, as well as other aspects of social cognition. In the past she conducted research for the Royal Mint to ensure that new UK coins can be distinguished from each other by sight and by touch.

Professor Bruce is an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is currently President of the Experimental Psychology Society and former President of the British Psychological Society and the European Society for Cognitive Psychology.

Professor Bruce served on the Council of the ESRC and committees of the MRC. She was chair of the Psychology RAE panel in 1996 and 2001, and of main panel K in the 2008 exercise. She was awarded the OBE for services to Psychology in 1997.

She was Professor of Psychology at the Universities of Nottingham and then Stirling, before becoming Vice Principal and Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. She moved to Newcastle University in 2008 where she is Head of the School of Psychology, and chairs the University Diversity Committee.

Teresa Graham CBE
Teresa Graham graduated from Newcastle University in 1977. She joined the Newcastle upon Tyne office of a Big 5 firm as a student accountant and transferred to the firm’s Department of Privatisation Services in London in 1989. From December 1986 to August 1987, she was seconded to the UK Government’s Enterprise and Deregulation Unit reporting directly to Lord Young, the Secretary of State for Employment and then Trade and Industry.  In March 1988 she was appointed to the Government’s Deregulation Advisory Panel for a two year term.

She was winner of the “Young Accountant of the Year Award” for 1988 in recognition of her contribution to the small firms sector, her profession and work with Government.
Teresa joined Baker Tilly in 1989 and during her time there she headed up their Business Services Department. She now works independently focusing on her two passions – strategic advice to ambitious, growing businesses and liberating these businesses from the fetters of red tape. She holds a number of non executive directorships in SMEs as well as in one of the largest private companies in the UK.  She also has a variety of mentoring and advisory roles in other growth businesses.

Jane Nolan MBE
Jane Nolan has 36 years of experience in business. She was owner manager and Chief Executive of Shark Group, an extremely successful niche design and manufacturing company based in rural Northumberland. Shark Group sold its innovative products in 29 countries and won many accolades, from best small company in the North East to national and international awards for design and innovation, in addition to awards for export achievement and staff training and development.

Following the sale of Shark Group, Jane has set up a coaching and consultancy company, working with businesses and the third sector. She is also an Entrepreneur in Residence with Newcastle University Careers Service and is currently working as a part time Development Officer in the Entrepreneurial Development Unit, facilitating workshops, teaching enterprise and coaching students as they develop their business ideas.

Jane was awarded the MBE in 2000, was NE Rural Woman Entrepreneur of the Year and the winner of a UKTI Achievement in Export award in 2006. Jane has also been a volunteer for more than 25 years, working in a wide variety of roles, including working as a board member of a number of regeneration and business support organisations and chairing Northumberland Strategic Partnership. She has also worked with educators and young people in enterprise initiatives such as Young Foresight, has been a school governor and a member of sector skills and university business school advisory panels. She is also a trustee of two charities.

Jane is a graduate of Newcastle University (BA (Hons) and MA) and also has an MBA from the Open University.

Rebecca Howard
Rebecca set up Cynergy in 2002, and has seen it grow into a multi-award-winning specialist communications and events agency, helping organisations who share their values of genuine social responsibility, and which seek to benefit society by changing and improving people’s lives.

Rebecca is a skilled communicator with extensive expertise in the strategic development and implementation of a wide range of communications initiatives. Her ability to genuinely understand organisational culture, key issues and challenges allows her to provide dynamic, clear and outcome-focused solutions for a wide range of clients in the public sector, not-for-profit and charitable sectors.

As part of her commitment to socially responsible projects, Rebecca has recently created up Sensevents, a sustainable events company which is a social enterprise, with at least 50% of its profits being are given back to charities and voluntary organisations. Sensevents is working with third sector organisations, charities and other social enterprises to increase their capacity, as well as with corporate clients on CSR and environmental projects.

Rebecca is also on the board of Acumen CIC, a social enterprise aimed at helping disadvantaged people to become more enterprising. She is currently involved in a national project with prisons aimed at using enterprise to reduce re-offending rates.

Rebecca won ‘North-East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2009, whilst Cynergy won ‘Best Small Business’ at both the North East ‘Women into the Network’ (WIN) Awards, and the Tees Valley Business Awards. Since then Rebecca has acted as the region’s ambassador for promoting women in business, providing advice and guidance to Ministers at the Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and RDAs. Rebecca is on the Tees Valley Board of WIN and the board of the Enterprise Learning Partnership.

She is an experienced speaker on business and enterprise, and a skilled facilitator and presenter with extensive experience of creating real stakeholder engagement, and is an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Master Practitioner. Rebecca is a graduate of Newcastle University and Durham University Business School (NLP).