Alan Bailey - Chairman, Low Carbon South West CIC

Co-founder & Chairman of ABS Renewables and a Director of Environmental Lean Solutions, started his entrepreneurial career after leaving University, by setting up and running numerous property based businesses. He remains one of Bristol's largest residential landlords. In 2005, after presenting the case to BERR, Alan co-set up ABS Biodiesel, successfully enabling this company to be the first start up in UK history to qualify for a SFI capital grant panel interview. In 2008, he accepted the invitation to chair the Bristol Environmental Technology & Services Sector (BETS) and developed it from a local network to being the largest environmental trade association in UK. The trade association has now merged with Low Carbon South West and Alan remains Chairman of this much larger entity. He is currently chair of the Avonmouth Green Industries Forum and in 2009 launched the Hydrogen Strategy Board for Bristol & SW Region. He currently sits on the Bristol Green Capital Momentum Group and represented Bristol in Brussels for the European Green Capital Final. Alan also sits on the Business in the Community Mayday Steering Group; the EIC Renewable Fuel working group and the SW Design Programme Steering Group. He is the proposed chair of the South West Environmental Innovation Network, a £2.4M innovation and investor ready mechanism aligned to enabling over 300 high growth companies to launch their products and services. Alan is currently the Chair of the South West Combined Universities Low Carbon High Skills initiative.
 

Denis Burn - Chair of University of Bristol Council

Mr Denis Burn is currently a Director of Smith & Williamson in Bristol.  Educated at Glenalmond, the University of Bristol and INSEAD (the European Business School in France), he has a BSc in Engineering and an MBA.  Over a period spanning some thirty years, he has held a number of senior posts across a range of engineering based industries and in management consultancy, eventually co-founding a consultancy business and later an internet recruitment business in the education sector.  He is a past Master of the Merchant Venturers of Bristol and has a number of public and charitable interests linked to education and culture, including Chairman of the Theatre Royal in Bristol and Chairman of the Merchants’ Academy in Withywood.  He joined Council in February 2006 as the representative of the Merchant Venturers.  Mr Burn is married with four children and lives near Bristol.
 

Mark Preston - Principal, WHEB Partners

Mark has been evaluating, making and managing venture capital and private equity investments in the cleantech sector for four years. As a Principal in the WHEB Partners team his role covers deal sourcing, due diligence, deal execution and ongoing strategic work with portfolio companies. He has overall responsibility for the deal evaluation team at WHEB. Mark is a director of Petainer and is an observer on the boards of EVAP, Watson Brown and fluXXion. Prior to joining WHEB, Mark spent four years with Ernst & Young in their London Office, starting out in their Investment Management Audit practice, and latterly in the Transaction Advisory group. Mark is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has a degree in Geographical Sciences from Bristol University. He joined WHEB in January 2007and is a fluent Dutch speaker.
 

Nick Sturge - Centre Director, SETsquared

Nick was the founder of Motion Media Technology which listed on the London stock exchange in 2000. When Motion Media merged with SCOTTY Group, Nick consulted under the Omnigenix brand, including a part-time role as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre in Bristol. He is now SETsquared Centre Director, responsible for business incubation, at the University of Bristol. Under his leadership, the SETsquared Centre at Bristol won the UKBI “Business Incubator of the Year” award in November 2008. Nick was Chairman of the Bristol branch of the Institute of Directors from 2008 to 2010, is a board member on the West of England Skills & Competitiveness Board and sits on the board of several business, charitable and voluntary organisations. He is currently chair of the SW Science Park and Incubator Leaders Forum and is active in designing solutions for general business support and the new Business Coaching For Growth service, in the West of England.
 

Philip Tellwright Managing Director of SWAIN

Philip Tellwright brings to SWAIN a comprehensive understanding of investment into the small and medium sized firms market. For the past twenty years he has worked in four varied senior financial roles throughout the South West Region and has a proven track as a professional investor, Corporate Finance advisor and, in industry, as a Finance Director. As an Investment Controller with 3i where he completed over twenty investments, he spent seven years investing in small and medium sized businesses. He was also responsible for the management of a large portfolio of varied Investments across the South West region. In 1991 he moved to Devon based Inch's Cider Limited as Finance Director having previously advised the buy-in team on the acquisition of the company, and became an integral part of the team that successfully managed one of the fastest growing businesses in the Region through its most turbulent phase of expansion. Following Inch's (which was sold to H P Bulmer) Philip returned to Bristol to take up a second Finance Director role in a manufacturing environment at Brissco Equipment Limited. Following Brissco's, Philip joined Business West as leading Business Finance Adviser, during which time he advised on numerous finance raising assignments, including a considerable number of Business Angel investments. Based just outside Bristol, Philip is well placed to cover the northern three counties of the region.