Our growing businesses portfolio is delivered by a hand-picked team of specialist tutors and practitioners who combine hands-on management experience with academic authority.
The team are experienced business people who have generally run their own businesses and who now specialise in working with owner-managers and their businesses. All of the team share a passion to ensure that each individual participant derives the maximum possible benefit from their experience.
Stephanie Hussels
Programme Director
Stephanie teaches on executive, graduate, and doctoral levels on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance, family business and quantitative research methods. Besides working with entrepreneurs, Stephanie cooperates with charities and firms on how to encourage and implement intrapreneurship. Stephanie has a passion for early stage and growth companies, particularly family businesses. As part of her role at Cranfield School of Management she is the Director of the Business Growth Programme (BGP), the longest established owner-manager programme in the UK. Previously, Stephanie was the Director of the full-time MBA programme at Cranfield.
Stephanie's current research focuses on entrepreneurial resilience, family business and business survival. Stephanie has written several prize-winning case studies and is now frequently asked to give talks about case study writing and teaching.
Stephanie has also been an invited member of the judging panel for the National Business Awards, the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, Growth Investor Award and the Case Centre Awards Competition. She has also been an external mentor at JLAB, the John Lewis incubator.
Carol Foussat
Programme Leader
Carol Foussat is the Programme Leader of the Business Growth Programme. She has been working on the programme since 2005 and has helped dozens of companies transform their businesses and themselves. Carol first came to Cranfield in 1998 to do the two year Executive MBA, specialising in organisational change and leadership - two topics she believes are totally inter-twined. She covers these subjects on the Business Growth Programme.
While running the BGP keeps her busy, Carol also runs a couple of BGP Advisory Boards for business owners who have been through the programme and want to continue the learning and development journey with fellow past participants. This coaching and mentoring work is also done for other companies.
Carol’s background includes corporate planning in British Steel, strategy at the Department of Trade and Industry, economic and strategy consulting at KPMG Management Consulting, business development, strategic marketing and strategy at the AA, strategy and website creation/innovation for Centrica, working with Intrapreneurs at Henley College and leadership assessment for The Thinking Partnership. Her achievements include setting up theaa.com in 2000, having responsibility for delivering 1,000,000 car insurance policies and 500,000 home insurance policies, chairing meetings with senior politicians, and assessing senior management at various companies including Virgin Media, and the FSA. And redesigning the Business Growth Programme! She holds a Cranfield MBA, where she received the Strategy Prize, and holds a Cambridge MA in Economics. She is accredited in various psychometric tools. She has two children, one dog and two small allotments which are never free from weeds!
Carol also runs an entrepreneur's club for ambitious owner managers.
Alison Williams
Business Counsellor and Tutor
Alison has worked at board and director level since 2000. She co-founded a healthcare technology company, for which she achieved first and second round £multi-million Venture Capital Funding, growing the company from four to seventy employees in key markets across Europe, and in the process, changing EU Legislation. In 2012, Alison set up a commercial company for the NHS – 2014 National Business Awards Finalist - which operates both £multi-million and SME businesses. Alison previously worked as a Management Consultant for a global consultancy firm.
Alison completed her MBA at Cranfield, attended BGP in 2013 and is now a BGP counsellor.
Andy Haworth
Business Counsellor and Tutor, Finance Fundamentals and Essential Management Programme Leader
After gaining a degree in Economics, Andy progressed as a leader through the hierarchy in the bookmaking industry (notably becoming the man responsible for deciding the odds for Ladbrokes at major test and county cricket matches).
Following an MBA from Cranfield, he spent several years in consultancy, before starting Psychology and Finance at Work Limited - the business he now runs in partnership with his wife Jo, an Occupational Psychologist. Andy has a strong background as an educator, teaching all aspects of financial and non-financial analysis. He has designed and run a wide variety of training events from basic finance for non-financial managers to foreign exchange for managers and advanced corporate finance programmes. A substantial amount of his work has been with banks in the field of credit, teaching lenders to analyse businesses and assess risk. As part of this work he also designed and ran a range of sector analysis programmes covering construction, healthcare, retail and the licensed trade.
Andy also runs the Cranfield short courses, Finance Fundamentals and Essential Management.
Cliff Bowman
Tutor
Cliff has undertaken a wide range of consulting assignments which focus on the facilitation of strategy processes within firms. He has written eight books and published over sixty papers. He was Chairman of the European Case Clearing House, and Academic Dean of the School of Management from 1998-2006.
He specialises in:
- Complex systems
- The fundamentals of organising
- Empirical evidence of dynamic capabilities
- Value creation and capture
Jerry Sandys
Business Counsellor and Tutor, Sales Essentials and Essential Management Programme Leader
Jerry is a Cranfield Visiting Fellow. In the last 30 years Jerry has started and grown four successful companies.
Since the mid-eighties, Jerry concentrated on the telecommunications market. This in turn led him to form Telecom Design Ltd in 1987 with an investment of £1000. TDL was a design consultancy specialising in PTT approvals for the deregulated telecommunications market, the IP in TDL was sold to a customer in 1998. TDC, a technical component distributor was started in 1993 and following impressive growth, turnover increased from £330,000 in 1993 to £6.5m. In 1998 TDC was named as the 86th fastest UK growing company in the Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100.
After writing his first real business plan during BGP, Jerry realised that to take full advantage of the business opportunity at TDC, it needed to become part of a larger group. TDC was acquired by the Abacus Group in 2004. As a Corporate Executive, Jerry spent the next three years opening TDC offices in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and Germany.
John Kerr
Business Counsellor
John runs his own management consultancy business, and has over 25 years’ business experience, previously holding middle and senior management posts in large corporates and start-up ventures, in telecommunications, banking, and upstream oil & gas.
Joining his last company alongside early-stage private equity investment, John was integral to the company’s development and growth, its preparation for sale, and the sale process - helping the founders, investors and stakeholders achieve a £30M valuation at exit.
John holds a Masters in Engineering from the University of York, and an MBA from Cranfield University. John undertook BGP in 2006.
John McGillivray
Business Counsellor
John McGillivray has a strong international dimension to his diverse career. Schooled in Ireland, he graduated from university in South Africa and has lived and worked in Africa, UK, Asia and Australia.
He has held full management and P&L responsibility as CEO or General Manager for subsidiaries of global multinational companies, and also established and ran his own business.
Starting off his working career John worked as a technician, providing him with the fundamental understanding of his products and what his customers need. This knowledge and experience was invaluable as his career subsequently took a commercial and business management direction. Over the next 20 years John was the MD for a Joint Venture business in India, Country Head in Korea, Product Manager for Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong, and General Manager for the Malaysia subsidiary. He then spent a couple of years developing a biodiesel business in SE Asia and established his own service business, before relocating to Australia where he was responsible for running a contract application liquid fertiliser business. John returned to the UK as Commercial and Marketing Director (EMEA) of an AIM listed biotech business.
More recently John established RCD Business Acceleration, focussing on working with clients in the SME sector who are seeking to move their business forwards. Working with people for whom their businesses are their life, rather than the source of a salary is what most motivates him.
Mike Meldrum
Business Counsellor
Mike has worked at Cranfield since 1986. He originally joined as a full-time member of faculty but left in 2003 to build his own business while remaining a Cranfield Associate. He is now an independent consultant operating in partnership as Cottee Meldrum Ltd while regularly delivering between 10 and 30 days a year to Cranfield.
The majority of Mike’s business is now one-to-one executive coaching and strategic support for business development. Previously, he organised and ran management development programmes focusing on leadership, strategy and marketing; marketing being his original discipline. Although many of his coachees hold significant management positions, his main area of interest is small to medium enterprises.
Outside employed work, Mike undertakes voluntary projects through The Cranfield Trust and still writes the occasional blog on leadership. He has recently become a hobby bee keeper hoping he can become proficient enough to help them thrive.
Mike Stiles
Business Counsellor
Mike is director of MD Consulting, a management consultancy that provides coaching, consultancy and interim management services for UK and international clients. In recent years, Mike has divided his time between counselling on the BGP, working with MDs and boards of smaller aspiring businesses and carrying out projects for large companies like BT (developing a business plan for a major new product) and Vodafone (educating their UK product managers). He holds non-exec directorships with a number of companies, including Identify Direct, Joeco and Scudamores.
Before setting up MD Consulting in 1991 Mike was a senior consultant in Business and Technology Strategy with PA Consulting Group. He has managed projects in marketing and business development, innovation and change management for companies in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia. His clients have included Government Departments (MOD/Qinetiq, DBIS, DEFRA) and firms in the automotive, communications, electronics, engineering, food and healthcare sectors.
Paul Rutt
Business Counsellor
Paul formed B2 in 1991 after a successful career in sales. Originally as a Xerox Concessionaire selling typewriters and photocopiers, B2 developed into a multi-skilled business to business services company. The business grew considerably through developing the business with Cranfield University, Paul made two business acquisitions and put in place a brilliant management team. With a turnover of over £6m and a staff number of 50, Paul sold the business in 2016!
Since selling his business, Paul devotes his time to new business ventures, working with the team at Cranfield (a long-held ambition), a Magistrate once a fortnight and to riding his bike – a bigger passion than B2.
Paul lives in Prestatyn, North Wales and is married to Trudy, they have 2 daughters, Mollie and Evie and 9 bikes!
Peter Swanson
Business Counsellor
Peter has over 30 years of direct SME management experience, founding his main business in the early 80s, straight from University (Peter has never had a job!). The company supplies materials and related products to high technology manufacturing companies. He has been involved with other sales and consultancy businesses to the technology sector, and has an interest in sales and marketing for SMEs. He is an award winning technical author and seminar presenter.
Peter Swanson attended the Cranfield University School of Management Business Growth Program (BGP) in 2001; with supreme irony, the market which the company serviced was decimated in the months following completion of BGP, and growth strategy gave way to survival mode. A reinvention put the company back onto a successful growth path. In the intervening years, he has been involved in the Cranfield-based BGP network, and was a member of a BGP Club for six years. In 2010 he was invited to become a Counsellor on BGP.
Peter was a Director for 17 years and former Chairman of the SMART Group, Europe’s largest technical trade association for electronics manufacturing. He has a MA degree in Mathematics and Law from Cambridge University. He has four (mostly) grown up children, and a passion for music of all kinds.
Richard Parsons
Business Counsellor and Tutor
Richard’s first career was in Advertising during which time he worked for global agency groups across brands such as Orange, Microsoft, DHL and DaimlerChrysler in a range of Strategic and Commercial roles. However, the ever-present call of entrepreneurship eventually won-out and Richard left the industry in 2005 to ‘fly solo’.
Today he thrives on the variety of a portfolio career encompassing ownership of a property group with divisions in land acquisition, construction, development and real estate / lettings and a consulting business providing real-world consulting and coaching to aspirational owner/managers across a variety of industry sectors.
He is currently the part-time joint CEO of a London FinTech software company (having moved over from a former Non-Exec position for an interim period) and is also currently in the process of looking to acquire another business.
Away from the ‘day-job’, Richard supports the boards of two charities and was, until the end of 2016, a Trustee Director and Chair of ECHO, a children’s heart charity closely affiliated to the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, where he worked with the CEO in leading a significant strategic repositioning of the organisation.
Yvonne Quinn
Business Counsellor and Tutor
A serial entrepreneur, SME owner/investor and leadership coach, Yvonne has worked at Board and Director level, driving the effective achievement of operational, financial, marketing and sales goals. Learning and development is a key specialism. FPM, the company she co-founded in 2001, designed and delivered leadership, management and practitioner training to 20,000+ people over a ten-year period.
Yvonne is a business counsellor on the Business Growth Programme and runs a Business Growth Club. This brings her into contact with over 100 owner/managers every year from a wide range of different industry sectors and gives her a unique insight into the opportunities and challenges they face.
Yvonne was a judge on the 2012 National Business Awards (Blackberry Growth Strategy) and was the short-list judge for the 2013 National Business Awards Growth Business of the Year, in addition to chairing the final judging panel. She has co-written a number of books on leadership and management.
Emma Simpson
Business Counsellor
Emma has spent her career working within and with SME’s, across multiple sectors such as: catering, engineering and healthcare. Her love for SME life stems from the belief that the greatest innovation and challenges to conventional business thinking is born from the creativity, agility and entrepreneurial thinking of business owners.
Emma comes from an accounts & finance background and like so many others who have progressed within SME’s, her journey into leadership was unconventional. Having joined a company in difficulty, it provided her with endless learning opportunities, allowed her to re-build the business from the bottom-up whilst providing her with real insight into what people on the ground really want from their leaders.
Her main accomplishments are:
- Negotiated and acquired the assets of a business which went on to generate an ROI within two years
- Discovered a large unaccounted financial liability which was repaid via a negotiated payment plan without incurring any interest or financial charges
- Reduced operational costs by 50% via efficiencies and implementing automated processes
- Built a talented, enthusiastic and driven Senior Management team who in turn have assisted in establishing a positive company culture
- Restructured the company by repositioning and mentoring rising talent within the organisation
Emma’s first experience of Cranfield was in January 2019 when she completed the Business Growth Programme (BGP) and went on to join a BGP advisory Board with other Cranfield alumni. Since then, she has become a counsellor on the BGP programme as well as Business Growth Adviser.
It is now Emma’s passion to share her wealth of real SME and leadership experience via coaching, mentoring and facilitation. Helping other businesses not only grow their bottom lines, but their people, future rising stars and culture.
Martin Spiller
Tutor
Martin is a passionate and highly motivated commercially focussed chief financial officer, experienced non-executive director and senior lecturer inentrepreneurship at The Bettany Centre within Cranfield University's School of Management.
He has a differentiated skill set being both a chartered accountant and barrister-at-law (non-practicing) with a proven track record of delivering real improvements in business performance across a range of sectors and business types and he has founded, built and exited two businesses of his own and a number as a non-executive.
Martin has spent the last 10 years+ working with high growth and venture capital backed companies, including making several angel investments and sitting on the investment committee of a leading SEIS and EIS investment fund and his specialism is helping entrepreneurial ventures to grow by providing strategic financial direction and skills.
At Cranfield Martin teaches on both graduate and executive education courses and his areas of focus are entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance with a particular interest in valuation methodologies for early stage and high growth companies.
Dr Veronica Burke
Tutor
Veronica is an executive development consultant with extensive UK and international experience. She has a strong background in individual and team coaching, leadership and organisational development. Skilled in the end-to-end management of executive leadership development, 1-1 coaching, assessment, moderation and curriculum design. Extensive experience in the delivery of management development programmes for a wide range of public and private sector organisations.
Angus Hone
Business Counsellor
Angus Hone has considerable CFO and CEO experience with smaller entities. Starting his career as a Chartered Accountant (KPMG) Angus spent the first 10 years in global entities (ICL/Fujitsu & GSK). Completing the Cranfield MBA in 2000 made Angus realise he was much better suited to smaller entities.
The next 10 years were mainly as CFO, working with a number of early-stage technology businesses (biotech, software tech). Focus was mainly on raising investment, looking after broader operational activities, and managing a number of exits. In 2010 Angus co-founded a renewable energy business, selling to an MBO 2 years later. Angus has been CEO twice since then, the most recent was running a radar business. Angus took the team through a ‘consensual revolution’ – turning a loss-making business into profit, 3x increase in turnover and transforming the culture to be much more commercial.
Currently Angus has been retained as strategy and advisor to two engineering businesses, and advisor to a bulk haulage trailer business - a graduate from BGP in 2022.
Support Team
Mukhthair Badhan - Executive Development Relationship Manager
Tel: +44 (0)1234 754300 / Email: mukhthair.badhan@cranfield.ac.uk
Wendy Lewis - Executive Development Coordinator: Business Growth Programme, Essential Management, Sales Essentials & Finance Fundamentals programmes
Tel: +44 (0)1234 754236 / Email: wendy.lewis@cranfield.ac.uk