Want to know who’ll support your ideas?
Meet Team TEDCO! You’ll find they each have their own business experience; they’ve learned what works (and what doesn’t!) and that knowledge is shared most generously with those who want to start or grow their business.
Meet The Team
Janice Ross MBE
Marketing Manager
Janice’s special skill is reflecting people’s talents back at them; building confidence and gently encouraging folk to take their next step in life. She weaves that ethos into her marketing projects.
James Craft
Chief Executive
James has a spectacular ability to absorb business knowledge. He knows how to use it to not only launch successful businesses, but to scale them too. He manages a team of advisors and develops opportunities.
Mark Johnston
Business Advisor
With a banking background, and experience of running his own business too, Mark helps businesses prosper from start-up through to maturity. He’s patient and has a warm sense of humour which keeps things real for entrepreneurs.
Ross Laffey
Business Support Manager
Ross is an engaging business coach and uses his own stories of running successful enterprises to inspire others to do the same. He manages a team of advisors on projects from grass roots to Uni.
Jeff Thompson
Business Advisor
Jeff knows that listening carefully to you is the best way to help you move forward. A former business owner and part of a team who completed a Management Buy Out, he’s familiar with challenge, failure and achievement. A superb sounding board.
Nick Turner
Business Advisor
Working with pre-start, start-up and more established SMEs throughout North Tyneside, Nick likes to focus on the more financial aspects of business support, assisting clients to seriously examine the ‘nuts and bolts’ of their propositions.
Steve Langdown
Business Advisor
An experienced owner of technology based ventures, Steve has a good eye for growth plans with an interest in sustainability. Practical and pragmatic, his clients benefit from his real solutions.
Allison Nicks
Business Advisor
Allison owned her own company which gives her a good insight for clients today. Her varied career includes retail, banking and training which means she can be hands-on teaching would-be, and established, business owners.
Tony Grainger
Business Advisor
A career in business support and banking, running a company and a charity means Tony can see the way forward for budding entrepreneurs, from the start of a journey to a successful business venture.
Judith Wheatley
Business Advisor
Judith thrives on the time she spends coaching those who want to develop their business ideas. Helping them create a business plan, she shows them how they can run a viable business
Bill Hartshorne
Business Advisor
Bill has been with us since the year dot. Don’t tell him we said that though!
A former bank manager, Bill is renowned for caring about the businesses he works with and isn’t shy of telling it like it is.
Claire Garner
Claims and Finance Manager
Claire manages our claims and finance function and ensures the smooth running of all the programmes and operations whilst keeping a very close eye on the purse strings.
Alan Dodsworth
Business Advisor
A results driven Multi Channel Retail / Commercial Operator with 20+ years Senior Leadership experience, growing turnover and profitability across Retail Stores, Wholesale, E Commerce, Export, National Accounts, Travel Retail as well as Franchisee and Distributor Partnerships.
Heather Howat
Senior Business Support Co-ordinator
Heather is the first point of contact when you contact TEDCO HQ. Her experience as a PA means she keeps our flight deck safe, and most importantly you feel well looked after. Heather pictured here at SimFly.
Laura Dawson
Business Advisor
Laura is a multi award-winning social media and digital marketing strategist with years of experience in running, and scaling, on and offline startups from ecommerce to tech and beyond.
From our headquarters at One Trinity Green we deliver programmes across the North East of England.
TEDCO is a member of Start & Grow UK (formerly Cavendish Consortium) – a group made up of six of England’s largest and most successful enterprise agencies, together with the National Enterprise Network.
Each member organisation represents the very finest the business support community has to offer, with a reputation for working closely with organisations from all manner of industries and sectors to achieve excellent results in business enterprise.
As Start & Grow UK (North East) we deliver a multitude of programmes aimed at helping entrepreneurs to build successful and sustainable businesses.
We are also proud to be delivery partners with Virgin Start Up, providing low-interest loans, advice, resources and support every step of the way of the pre and post start phase of an entrepreneur’s journey.