Susan is Corporate Marketing Manager at One North East, the regional development agency for North East England. She is a seasoned communications professional with over ten years’ experience in both the public and private sectors.

Susan has been with the Agency for five years, and currently manages a team of seven staff to promote the work of One North East to its stakeholders. The team has responsibility for managing the Agency’s website, intranet, corporate database, internal communications as well as general corporate marketing.

Susan started her marketing career working in the publishing and secretarial recruitment sectors in London, before moving to Nottingham where she joined East Midlands Development Agency as Marketing Officer.

On moving to North East England Susan worked for South Tyneside Council before moving to take up her current role at One North East.

I believe it is crucial for those working in the public sector, that they look to work with others in different organisations in order to share information, learning and increase the efficiency in the long term of their own organisation, as well as helping other organisations to do the same. This will be increasingly important in the future, as we all face even more change and pressure on budgets. The ‘Shout’ campaign gives us a chance to showcase what is already happening across the region.

Dinah is Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Durham University. She researches and teaches nationally and internationally on marketing related issues and the concept of Networking and Relationship Management in relation to successful Business Development.

In 1999 Dinah founded an innovative project ‘Women into the Network’ (WIN) which was selected as the UK best practice initiative for promoting female entrepreneurship in a recent EU survey. This is now a Limited company owned and managed by female entrepreneurs.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2005 Dinah won an individual Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in recognition of her work promoting enterprise nationally and internationally. In 2006 Dinah was awarded Confederation of British Industry First Woman corporate award for her work supporting female entrepreneurship.

Stephen Green is Head of Communications at the Entrepreneurs Forum. It was set up over 6 years ago by entrepreneurs in the North East for entrepreneurs. It aims to help and inspire its members and others to build the most successful business possible.

The idea was simple - to create a cross sector peer - group of like minded individuals who could share ideas, knowledge, inspiration and opportunities in a confidential environment.

Stephen joined the team at the Forum in 2007 following a career spanning more than 15 years in marketing communications with leading agencies in the North East. His role was to develop a campaign, funded by One North East, to promote an entrepreneurial culture across the region.

The result was ifwecanyoucan which uses a community-based approach to encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship in the North East – inspiring people to set up businesses, grow them faster, have vision, grasp opportunities, and recognise that people of all backgrounds have become successful entrepreneurs.

The campaign is centred around a website - www.ifwecanyoucan.co.uk - and the Challenge, now in its third year, which has been adopted by the regional media as their own.

Think about who you would invite if we gave you the stage. We’ll ask you if you have held an event for these people before or if you have their contact details. We are also interested in any promotional materials you’ve created to support your cause or your organisation, and most importantly we want to know how your participation in our event could benefit the region.