Rachel is a Director at Thompson Wright Chartered Accountants, one of the leading firms of accountants in our region. She has worked in Staffordshire for over 20 years, the last 7 of which have been at TW. Rachel has extensive experience in advising clients over a variety of sectors and sizes, from manufacturing through to rural and agricultural businesses.

Rachel was appointed a Director in November 2020, and splits her time across TW’s Newcastle and Leek offices. In her time at Thompson Wright she has seen the firm grow from around 50 staff when she joined, to just over 100 today with the inclusion of their recently acquired Hale office. She puts much of the firm’s growth down to great team work, great communication and ‘going the extra mile’ for their clients.

Rachel is actively involved with her client businesses, and advises her clients in real time, rather than seeing her role as an annual meeting to discuss historic records. She has a keen interest in helping clients to understand their accounts, identifying tax saving measures and planning ahead to ensure that growth opportunities are identified and taken (including assisting clients to achieve grant funding of over £250k in recent years). She is a firm believer that her clients should have short, mid & long term goals, and ultimately benefit from the blood sweat and tears that they are putting into running their business.

Outside of work, Rachel lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, two small children and trusty sausage dog. She is a general sports fan, with an emphasis on football (but isn’t disclosing her loyalties)!

Rachel is President of the Local Area Board for the Staffordshire Moorlands and regularly attends the Chambers Rural Business Forum.

Sara Williams took over as the Chief Executive of North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce in November 2011 and has since overseen the creation of the powerful Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce group.  Her aim is to create a welcoming organising every local business wants to join and making Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire a place full of prosperity and opportunity.

Previously she was Director of Enterprise at St Helens Chamber.  Responsible for a team of talented people helping change the culture of enterprise in St Helens – from working with young people in schools through to helping businesses facing tough decisions.

Sara is a strong advocate for the private sector taking a lead in all aspects of economic development. She believes that Chambers of Commerce provide an excellent platform for engaging with and supporting businesses to grow and prosper.  This comes from having run her own small arts consultancy business and coming from a family of entrepreneurs, some more successful than others.

Sara has a wealth of experience working with the private sector to develop services in response to their needs, as well as a proven track record of lobbying and representing businesses. Previously, Sara has worked in marketing and community development as well as in museums and galleries.  She originally trained as a museum curator at Manchester University after a first degree in Medieval History at University College London.

Sara has been a Governor of Liverpool John Moores University and is currently on the Board of Governors of Staffordshire University and a non-Executive Director of the highly regarded New Vic Theatre based in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Sara splits her time between Staffordshire and Liverpool and returns to her home town of Nottingham, where she went to school at Nottingham High School for Girls, on a regular basis.  She has recently got married to her partner of 23 years and they have three grown up children between them.  In her spare time, Sara enjoys gardening (her Liverpool garden is part of the National Garden Scheme), sewing (she has a passion for clothes), and salsa dancing.

Steve has worked and ran businesses in Staffordshire since 2000. He currently owns and operates Sempar Tax & Accountancy, a firm of accountants and tax advisors as well as owning a share of a software development company and a domiciliary healthcare company, all based in Staffordshire. Steve started Sempar (translates to mean unparalleled) in 2016 and the company has grown from strength to strength now employing 18 team members and closing in on a turnover of £1m per annum. Steve has two mantras in his life, these being “leave the world a better place” and “always do the right thing” and Sempar has been built on these mantras with it’s clients and team in mind. In his role at Sempar Steve focuses on the strategy and culture and as an advisor helps high growth businesses achieve their goals.

www.sempar.co.uk

Geoff Riley is Chief Executive of Staffordshire & Black Country Business Innovation Centre (BIC) based in the Sutherland Institute, Longton.

Geoff has a background in electrical and electronic engineering and has held senior positions in both SMEs and large public and private sector organisations.

After a number of years managing and delivering engineering training at the Michelin Tyre Company, Geoff moved to the public sector and worked for a time as a lecturer in FE.  From here he rose to become Head of a successful Commercial Development Department at Newcastle under Lyme College before moving to the Consortium of Staffordshire Colleges as External Funding Projects Director. After two years with the Staffordshire Consortium, Geoff moved to the Staffordshire and Black Country BIC as Chief Executive and has successfully developed the ‘Local BIC’ concept enabling incubators to be established at the point of need and a portfolio of support packages to help new high value, high growth and technology based businesses.

Geoff has been extensively involved in European and National funding initiatives for the past 27 years.  He has served on a number of key Staffordshire and West Midlands regeneration groups and acts as innovation and incubation advisor. Geoff acts as a quality auditor for the European Business Network throughout the EU.

thebic.co.uk

Keith is Managing Director of Wardell Armstrong.  Wardell Armstrong is an international environmental and engineering consultancy working in the property, infrastructure and mining sectors.  The firm has it’s headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent and has 14 UK offices and 2 international offices.  Wardell Armstrong employs 500 people and 150 of those work in Stoke.  Keith is passionate about the role Wardell Armstrong plays in the city and the wider region.

www.wardell-armstrong.com

Julie Mirowski is a Director of Rydale Roofing Ltd. A family run business, Rydale Roofing Ltd is committed to exceptional quality and customer service.

Working alongside husband Mick, Julie is responsible for areas of the business including liaising with customers, submitting tenders, Estimates, HR and payroll but can be often found drumming up new business by networking both in person and through social media which also keeps them up to date with new and changing laws, procurement releases and trade regulations

Julie is an active member of The Chambers Social value forum. Social value is very important to the company and Rydale Roofing gives back to people in the community in many ways.

Julie is a Trustee of the Alice Charity and is committed to the charity’s work of ridding the area of impoverished families

She also works closely with local schools as a Career ready Mentor

rydaleroofing.co.uk

Originally from Stafford Martin has over 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical marketing and medical communications. After starting his career in the UK, Martin moved to Switzerland with Novartis in the Organ Transplantation global marketing team. He then moved to the US joining Wyeth, later returning to Europe as commercial director for Transplantation and Haemophilia. In 2003 Martin returned to the US as head of Global Strategy for their flagship product in rheumatology overseeing its growth to a multibillion-dollar blockbuster.

Martin returned to the UK as Partner in London medical communications agency Synergy. He then established ELM group in 2014 returning home to Stafford permanently. ELM group has a core in medical communications working in areas such as rheumatology, haemophilia, rare diseases and more recently have done work on COVID therapies. The group enjoy unique collaborations with Universities of Glasgow and Leeds and has a partnership with the BMJ Group. Its People division has worked with Premiership rugby and Premier League football clubs as well as major companies developing and delivering training and volunteer programmes. His overall ambition is developing jobs in the life sciences sector for local graduates.

Outside of work Martin’s main interest is in Rugby, a sport that he supports in various capacities. He served on the legacy team for the 2015 Rugby World Cup and as Chairman of Stafford Rugby Club, where he negotiated the deal for the new £4 million facility at the heart of Stafford. He currently supports the Newcastle Falcons academy programme and is a referee assessor.

elmgroupltd.com

Ramona is a solicitor turned entrepreneur. Her legal background is in litigation handling a commercial caseload of contract, property and banking litigation work. Her legal experience was gained internationally working in Kuala Lumpur, Geneva and here in Stoke-on-Trent. In 2010, Ramona turned to business by starting a property business as well as an ethical trading business specialising in home furnishings and e-commerce. From there she came to acquire the Belvoir sales and lettings agency in Stoke-on-Trent in 2017, which she runs as Managing Director. She continues to grow this business year on year alongside her responsibilities at the Chamber. Her other voluntary role is as Enterprise Advisor to a local high school. Her expertise that she brings to the Chamber is in legals, organisational growth, change management and representation at the Board for small family run businesses.

www.belvoir.co.uk

Managing director at Plinkfizz, Fiona has 25 years corporate client and agency experience of planning and delivering successful marketing campaigns.

Increasing engagement and improving productivity of digital marketing activities for clients is Fiona’s speciality, by helping companies communicate effectively with audiences using critical-lateral thinking and a strategic approach.

Leading a team of practitioners at Plinkfizz, Fiona has created a robust team, attracting exemplary skill from across the UK.

Awarded “Best Small Agency” in the Northern Marketing Awards 2017 and the only agency in Staffordshire to be listed in the Top 40 PR agencies by Prolific North, she is passionate about celebrating the success that her team achieves for their clients.

Also living in the area, Fiona is an ambassador for the development of business across the region, advising high growth potential organisations. She is also passionate about enabling young people to reach their potential, which has lead her to launch a social enterprise, supporting the education sector nationally.

www.plinkfizz.com

With over 30 years of industry and public sector experience, John’s management experience has been gained from world class manufacturing environments such as British Steel Plc, (Manufacturing Manager) and our local fire and rescue service, (Incident Commander / Business Support lead).

John studied at Staffordshire University where he completed a degree in Business and Finance. He is a Member of the Institution of Fire Engineers, a Fellow of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management and has been appointed Chartered Fellow of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.

John has a wealth of experience in contract management, health and safety compliance and business recovery / incident management and spends much of his time assisting and educating incident victims particularly after major events, although prevention activities also feature heavily in his day to day role as a fire officer.

John is an enthusiastic supporter of charities and local schools, having completed many hundreds of miles, raising £000’s cycling around the UK and Europe generating much needed funds for deserving local causes and the Fire Fighters Charity.  John also supports our local schools in the Careers and Enterprise Company initiative.

John is a member of the Staffordshire Branch of the  Institute of Occupational Safety and Health management committee, a member of The Dove Service Board / Trustees  and is absolutely passionate about bring growth and prosperity to our area.

www.staffordshirefire.gov.uk