Pictured: Peter Mols, Founder of Outside Ideas and OxLEP Business Ambassador, Sarah Mols, co-owner of Outside Ideas, and Richard Byard, Director of Business Development at OxLEP.
The Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) has launched a new initiative which sees previous and current clients of its business support programmes ‘spreading the word’ of OxLEP’s offer and – in turn – helping more Oxfordshire-based businesses to grow.
OxLEP Business – who operate as the Growth Hub for the county – have launched the ‘OxLEP Business Ambassadors.’ This informal and voluntary role sees some of Oxfordshire’s SMEs play a key part in further communicating OxLEP Business’ support offer to a wider network.
Recognising that even more organisations could benefit from a wide range of support opportunities delivered by OxLEP Business, ambassadors will help to raise awareness of OxLEP Business amongst the Oxfordshire SME community via their networks.
OxLEP already has a track-record of supporting a strong number of Oxfordshire-based businesses, with its last impact report stating that between October 2016 and March last year, it had worked with over 6,200 businesses from across Oxfordshire, providing around 18,000 hours of support and advice, worth over £28.75 million.
But despite this impressive record and reach into the Oxfordshire business community, OxLEP Business hopes that its ambassadors can encourage even more organisations to come forward and take advantage of the programmes of support.
Helen Brind – Growth Hub Manager for OxLEP – said: “We are extremely fortunate to have a very loyal client base, and this includes a number of what we describe as ‘super users’ who have accessed a significant level of our support over time, helping them hugely on their respective business journey.
“It therefore makes great sense to create a further platform for them to ‘shout out’ about how our work has helped them, whilst meanwhile increasing our reach into Oxfordshire businesses through their various networks.
“We are extremely grateful to our first cohort of ambassadors and hope they also get some real value from this opportunity too.”
The OxLEP Business Ambassadors:
- Cath Convery - Explosive Learning Solutions
- Darren Evans - After Cloud
- Dave Lewis - Earth Trust
- John O'Brien - LCMB (Building Performance Specialists)
- Lindsey Eynon - Start to Thrive
- Mark Brown - Psybersafe
- Monika Zemla - Harwell Campus
- Peter Mols - Outside Ideas
- Stephen Clarke - Cherwell College
- Su Copeland - Priddey Marketing
- Wendy Tindsley - Oxford Innovation Services
