Biographies

Gordon Barraclough is Founding Partner of Taradin LLP. He is a business turnaround expert with over 30 years of front-line management experience from a range of sectors, including construction, information technology and manufacturing. With 20 years spent working as a company Director, Gordon has successfully applied business critical change management techniques in a variety of highly pressurised and sensitive environments.

As co-founder and sales and marketing director, Gordon rapidly grew a technology-based start-up firm into a highly successful and profitable business with 85 employees across two locations, and an annual turnover of £5.5 million. Within two years as Managing Director, Gordon transformed a Midlands-based medium-sized manufacturing company from multi-million pound trading losses into a sustainable business, safeguarding 150 manufacturing jobs. He has a close working knowledge of cost control, key performance indicators, brand development, lean manufacturing, IT and management reporting.

Gordon's experiences (both positive and negative) of managing a fast growing start-up company in a uniquely challenging trading environment have been the subject of an in-depth case study frequently used as part of the core curriculum at Strathclyde University Business School. He has served on the main board of the Entrepreneurial Exchange and is a member of the PwC Turnaround Panel.

Brian is an entrepreneur who possesses the knowledge and experience of both a fast-advancing managerial career in industry and of personal high growth business start up. With an acute commercial awareness and astuteness for determining optimal organisational needs, his focus is on maximising talent to achieve extraordinary success.

Brian (Dip Eng) was educated at Glasgow Caledonian University and embarked upon a successful management career with Weir Pumps. Over the next fifteen years he ran companies at board level within several different industry sectors including Electronics, Heavy Engineering, Construction, Petrochemical, and Oil and Gas. In each of these positions he had full P&L responsibility.

He launched his first company in 1995 in the automotive sector and within three years had reached a £5m turnover. Soon after he sold his interest to his fellow shareholders and started his own Oil and Gas company. This award-winning business was acknowledged for its rapid growth and for its exceptional export achievements. In 2004 Brian sold the enterprise to the management team and during this period he became an active investor spending in the region of £150k in a number of start up ventures.

Brian exited from The Learning Organisation Ltd in 2007. This is a group specialising in training and business start up, the Group helped train in excess of 25,000 people annually and has assisted over 80,000 people start up in business.

Brian's interest in this sector began eight years earlier as a volunteer business advisor to one of the Group companies and within one year he had bought into that Company. One year on, he formed a group holding company and was the architect of creating a Group shareholding structure. He took over as CEO in late 1999 and the following year led an MBO. In the last few years Brian has successfully restructured the Group from one with a mediocre performance to one heralded within its industry as a top performer. Brian led the initiative to sell the group companies to allow him to focus on helping businesses primarily based in Scotland build and grow to businesses of scale.

Brian was key in the Management Buy Out and formation of Brightwork limited, a recruitment company specialising in both temporary and permanent placements. Brightwork, with sales of £6.5m at buy out, expanded turnover to £13m by the end of year two and now employs 30 full time staff and over 1000 temporary staff. Brian is the Executive Chairman of the company. http://www.brightworkltd.com

Brian is also Non Executive Chairman of Peoplematters who specialise in people and organisational development. http://www.peoplematters.co.uk

Brian has also launched his own consultancy working with companies and individuals helping them maximise shareholder value. http://www.tiger-eye.org/

A well known specialist in entrepreneurship and new venture creation in Scotland, John brings considerable experience of emerging and high growth companies to his role as Chief Executive of The Entrepreneurial Exchange.

A founder member of The Entrepreneurial Exchange, John was a shareholding director of a young venture backed technology company engaged in the design, manufacture and distribution of laboratory equipment. He co-founded a company that provided pre-hospital emergency care and healthcare industry training and also a new media business. As CA in professional practice he worked with many of Scotland's most exciting growth companies after returning to Scotland from Chicago in 1989.

John is a regular contributor to the media on issues facing emerging and high growth companies and was instrumental in setting up the Scottish Enterprise "Local Heroes" project, based in part on his own MBA thesis "Local Heroes - Scotland's Entrepreneurial Role Models".

An experienced non-executive director in growing businesses, currently with three appointments, John is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde, a founding GlobalScot member and sits on the boards of PSYBT and Stirling University Innovation Park. John is Chairman of the Tayside and Fife regional committee of the Game Conservancy Trust.