Yes You Can: Grow It

Diane Roberts

XPinnovates

Diane is a growth strategist with proven expertise in start-up development, scaling businesses, building international growth plans, and acquiring funding. She spent her early career in international technology sales and marketing roles and brings over 25 years rich industry experience developing new business in the UK, USA, Europe and Asia Pacific. Diane delivered the Propel programme, a high growth start up programme, for Invest NI for 11 years. She is currently a lead mentor for the International Selling programme for Enterprise Ireland and TU Dublin. She regularly assists accelerators across Ireland and UK, including EIT Food, Portershed, and Queens University. As a seasoned business mentor, Diane has been a highly respected advisor, board member and senior executive coach to 100s of high growth firms.

Aisling Bremner

Aisling Bremner Marketing

Aisling has more than 20 years’ experience working with iconic global brands including Heinz, Budweiser, Coors Light and market leading local brands including Dale Farm, Queen’s University Belfast and Keylite. Today Aisling specialises in supporting the growth of businesses through the development of successful brand growth and brand positioning strategies and brings her two decades of senior marketing strategy leadership positions to local businesses and brand

Jim Irving

Jim Irving Consultancy

Jim is a Sales Consultant, having spent a lifetime in sales and marketing. He is author of B2B Selling, B2B Leaders Guidebook and co-author of B2B Sales Top Tips – 3 leading books plus winning a ‘Best Sales Books of 2021 and ‘Best B2B Audio Book for 2022’ Award from ‘BookAuthority’ position him as both an excellent author and thought leader in this space. Over the last 15 years, since leaving the corporate world and starting his own consultancy, he has improved the sales processes/results and mentored the founders and business leaders in many early stage and SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) organisations. He has worked with over 40 start-ups in NI. He is a Fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM) and a Founding Fellow of The Institute of Sales Professionals (FF.ISP).

Frank Given

Close Focus

Frank is a business consultant with over 25 years industrial experience comprising Technical, Commercial, Executive Leadership and Consulting. He currently works with both early stage and experienced businesses to sell more outside Northern Ireland. Frank has also worked as an independent consultant on Sales and Export focused programmes for Invest Northern Ireland, InterTradeIreland and Enterprise Ireland, supporting over 100 businesses on their export journey.

Anne McMurray

Anne McMurray Consulting

Anne established her consultancy practice in 2000, specialising in strategic leadership, organisation and team development. She has worked with women leadership development since 1990, supporting women from a range of sectors and is a Professional Certified Coach, credentialed by the International Coach Federation. Anne has completed the Master Practitioner Diploma in Systemic Team Coaching (2019) and Certificate in Coaching Constellations (2016). As a result of her continued efforts, Anne was awarded an MBE in recognition of her work in women’s enterprise and leadership in Northern Ireland.

Claire Stewart

Cartmill Stewart & Co

Claire is a Chartered Accountant and co-owner/partner at Cartmill Stewart & Co. She is a passionate supporter of female entrepreneurship and a business mentor, and while a finance specialist, she can support business owners with their overall growth strategy. She was NI Young Leader of the Year 2019 , NI 40 under 40 2018, Winner of Women in Business NI Customer Service Award 2018, and one of Top 10 Voices in Finance, Accounting and FP&A on LinkedIn in 2019 as voted by the public. Claire loves to be part of the local business community with her extensive business network.

John Ferris

Ulster Bank

As a journalist and editor at the North Belfast News, John ran Ireland’s most successful independent food website, Forked. In 2013 he launched a wifi software technology startup, which was used in restaurants, cafés, hotels, stadia and vehicles around the world. John joined Entrepreneurial Spark in 2015 to help support ambitious startups throughout Ireland. Since joining the team, he has worked to support 7000+ startups across the country. Since 2019, John sits as a member of Ulster Bank's Regional Board and leads on climate and the drive to support a more diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem in Northern Ireland. In that time John has also taken on an additional roles in both Strategic Investment Board in NI and as Norther Ireland’s Dealmaker, Department for International Trade.

Roisin McDermott

Yes You Can Programme Manager

Roisin is a Business Mentor and Trainer with over 20 years experience in supporting entrepreneurship. She has a degree in Business Studies, an MBA, and an Advanced Diploma in Digital Marketing and was one of the primary founders of Women in Business. Roisin has re-joined the Women in Business team to lead the Yes You Can programme on a part time basis, supporting female entrepreneurship. Prior to being self-employed for 14 years as Seed Mentoring, she has worked in the enterprise agency network for North Down Development and East Belfast Enterprise. Roisin is also the Treasurer of Specialisterne NI, a social enterprise supporting neuro-diversity and employability and coaches a local girls football team.