Delivery Team | DCI Durham City Incubator

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Durham City Incubator Delivery Team

The Durham City Incubator delivery team is a group of experts dedicated to helping businesses grow and succeed. We're passionate about supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses in the North East of England. Our team includes experienced business leaders, academics, and consultants, all committed to helping businesses achieve their full potential.

Leon has over 20 years’ experience supporting and developing businesses of all types across the North East. He has helped business of all sizes grow, from start-ups to established global brands.

Leon has a background in running businesses and social enterprises and has skills and experience in strategic planning, marketing and innovation.

At DCI, Leon aims to assist new businesses with potential to scale to grow and fulfil their potential.

Leon Howe

DCI Manager

Natasha has over 20 years’ experience leading marketing campaigns for exciting new start-ups all the way through to some of the world’s biggest brands.

In 2000 Natasha moved to Los Angeles to promote a B2B publication on the dot-com boom. She then moved to Sydney and worked in a fast-paced marketing team on a Sony account before moving back to the UK in 2005 to run the marketing campaigns for policy events on behalf of The CBI, the NHS, British Chambers of Commerce and the Environment Agency.

Natasha relocated to the North East in 2007, and has since launched MMC, the Sunderland-based strategic marketing agency, and become the Chair of the Sunderland Committee for the Chamber of Commerce.

Natasha McDonough FCIM

Managing Director of MMC

Director Dave Gibson (MATT, ICPA Fellow) passed his banking accountancy exams in 1980 then switched careers, initially as a programmer and systems analyst/designer but soon evolving into Business Analyst and Project Management with organisations such as Gardner Merchant, the RCA and Northern Electric.

Dave has spent over 20 years helping departments and organisations through painful change and efficiencies, with occasional far-out trips to Australia, Kazakhstan and Gateshead. Dave founded Blu Sky in early 2005 on philosophies formed by his earlier experiences – that all businesses run on people, and clear communication and simple processes are key to success.

Dave Gibson MATT

Co-founder and Director of Blu Sky Chartered Accountants

Steven Robinson ACA joined Blu Sky as Financial Controller in April 2016, having since become the firm’s Financial Director. He brings 9 years’ experience working with owner-managed businesses to the table and became a member of ACA in January 2016.

Steven has a keen interest in entrepreneurial ventures and specialises in helping high-growth companies seeking investment achieve their financial goals.

Steven Robinson ACA

Financial Director at Blu Sky Chartered Accountants

Justin is a lean start-up trainer, business consultant, and supporter of start-ups.

For nearly ten years, Justin worked as a business consultant in enterprise IT. As the Managing Director of Souter Consulting, now he helps clients harness the lean start-up framework to create growth, innovation, and greater agility.

Justin has previously worked at the Happiest, helped set up the Searchcamp accelerator programme in Middlesbrough, and most recently was a Director of Dynamo North East.

Justin Souter

Managing Director of Souter Consulting

Ian is an all-encompassing business development specialist that helps business of all sizes fulfil their potential.

As the Managing Director of Far North, Ian will help you review your existing marketing plan and business strategy and possibly help you develop a new, bespoke business model.

Ian has extensive experience in assisting clients to focus on increasing turnover and new customer additions, as well as taking clients into new territories and diverse industries.

Ian Farrar

Managing Director of Far North

Phil started his career in the creative industries in the late 1980s, and since then has worked as a creative lead for British Airways as well as running his own digital agency Silbo working with clients such as Virgin Holidays, Channel 4, War Child, as well as regeneration projects such as the Digital City in Teesside. Phil also joined the board of an international NGO in 2008 and has worked with the United Nations.

Phil also graduated in 2016 with a Professional Doctorate “The realization of a value-led organization: the “Digital NGO” as a case study”. This research fused industry-specific concepts such as Human Centred Design, Agile methods and Data Journalism with academic theory and personal motivations, leading to the formulation of an ethically-driven approach that he chose to call “Empathetic Design”.

Dr. Philip Veal

Director of Silbo

Graham is a Regional Director for Business Doctors and a graduate of Hull University’s MBA program achieving distinction. Graham works with SME owners helping them develop and implement strategies for growth. Always an adventurous soul, Graham’s early career was spent in the Merchant Navy joining directly from school and served on deep-sea vessels before moving on to offshore support vessels, progressing to Captain.

He then spent the next 24 years of his career drying out, whilst working for the world’s largest supplier of marine support for the offshore petroleum sector, Tidewater Marine. Still hungry for travel, Graham held a number of international sales and operational roles within the publicly listed company, based in New Orleans, Singapore and then Dubai.

In 1996 he took on his first general management role, heading up a joint enterprise between Tidewater and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Tasked with turning around an underperforming $25 million turnover venture before his employer’s impending departure, Graham of course succeeded, gaining an exit price way above expectation.

After a further three years as vice president international sales and marketing, back in his old stomping ground of New Orleans, Graham was headhunted and appointed to the board of V Group. His brief: to help this global marine services provider create a new income stream by supplying manpower into the energy sector. Over six years and from a zero-start, he built V.People into a $45m t/o company, contributing 30% of Group EBITDA. Eventually forming part of the leadership team preparing the group for a secondary buyout through to successful conclusion.

During this period, Graham initiated and led the $38m acquisition of RC Consultants, Norway’s largest staffing agency, subsequently managing post-acquisition integration and growth.

Marine recruitment remained the focus of Graham’s employment for the next six years, reinvigorating a failing internal recruitment business within AMEC (tripling turnover from £55m to £150m) and reviving the UK arm of global oil and gas recruiter Competentia.

His wanderlust (mainly) satiated, Graham now resides with his wife in the beautiful market town of Stockton –on-Tees. Self –employed for the first time, he is part of the national Business Doctors network and helps SMEs of all kinds to develop and implement strategies for growth.

Graham Robson

Business Doctor - Durham and Sunderland

Ammar is a sought after, multi award winning innovation and business growth expert. Over the past 20 years Ammar has helped establish hundreds of new start-ups and assisted a number of organisations to successfully scale including helping them raise £M’s in investment.

Prior to setting up his own consultancy, Ammar was responsible for IT Service Delivery at communication giant Telewest, where he led some of the foremost innovation projects within the UK.

Alongside being the founder of www.smecofe.com, Ammar holds numerous positions across the public and private sectors, and has one of the largest networks within the North East.

Ammar Mirza CBE FRSA FInstLM

Head of the SME Centre for Excellence

Jeni is passionate about connecting people. When people come together powerful things happen: relationships are built, knowledge is shared and sparks of innovation are fired.

With fourteen years’ experience in the networking industry, Jeni now teaches networking skills and creates networking strategies to help people come together and build effective, long-term relationships.

During her careers she has won a number of awards in enterprise including being named within the ‘Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs’ in the UK in 2010, and ‘Growth Accelerator Programme’ winner 2012.

Between 2017-19 she conducted two rounds of academic research with Durham University, exploring her unique strategic business networking model. The research results spurred her on to launch NetKno, a new networking consultancy, to help individuals and businesses become more confident, efficient and strategic networkers.

Jeni truly believes that networking has the ability to change people’s lives, unlock hidden potential, spark world-changing ideas and be the catalyst for positive change: all starting with a simple “Hello”.

Jeni Smith

Networking Strategist & Founder of Networking KnoWho

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