The Mentors
'E-Factor' Mentors
Tunde Alabi
Tunde is an accredited Business/Change Adviser with a background in business policy. His specialist area is people and organisations; in particular business coaching & mentoring for leadership. Over the past ten years his consulting experience has been developed within the public and private sector giving him valuable experience of issues within the business support services framework. Knowledge and delivery of business strategies form the area of his core expertise which includes performance coaching; growth facilitation, people change and new marketing paradigms. He also has an understanding of e-business dynamics, and its significance to the business process. Tunde is an accomplished presenter and public speaker and he inspires his target audience with his motivational style of delivery.
Ed Bell
Ed Bell has spent forty years in the oil and gas industry holding senior positions with Saudi Aramco and a Canadian consulting company. Ed was trained by British Petroleum (BP) and subsequently worked all over the world, including Japan, USA, Canada and the Middle East. Ed has many years experience in growing businesses since the mid 1980’s through the position of Managing Director of several UK companies. These have included computer software development, oil pollution and disaster consulting, facilities inspection, new technology R/D in bio-sensors and latterly into diagnostic systems for the environment, food toxicity and bio-security applications. Ed Bell has successfully managed small businesses (SME’s), fulfilling their potential and realising significant reward for the shareholders.
Anthony Bennett
Anthony holds a BSc degree in Hospitality Management, starting his training with Inter-Continental in France; he then worked in restaurants, moved back to London and latterly started working in contract catering. His roles over the last 8 years have included business development, mobilisation and operations. His clients have included some of the top banks, law firms, I.T., advertising and accounting companies in London. He then went on to work as an Operations Director with Restaurant Associates, part of Compass Group to set up the new division looking after a £15 million turnover. Latterly he was given the opportunity to start up a catering company with MITIE in London where he and colleagues have invested their own money into the business and after three and a half years have grown to £6.5 million in turnover.
David Bennett
David Bennett
David has had many years in the areas of skills development and business support programmes including collaboration programmes. Prior to joining Prevista David worked in East London for some 5 years working on several skills and business support initiatives. Prior to working in London David worked for some years for Birmingham Chamber of Commerce delivering business support and skills initiatives. During his time in Birmingham he was awarded a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for services to Business Development. David also has an interest in working with Young Enterprise and other business development programmes for young people.
Laura Chicurel
Laura Chicurel
Laura is the Managing Director and founder of Chicurela, a fashion accessories company that designs and manufactures exclusive eco-friendly salmon skin leather accessories. Laura possesses extensive experience in sales and human resources and regularly speaks at conferences to encourage entrepreneurship. Laura possesses a BA (Hons) in Business Management and Economy degree and is driven by her passion for success; she has even appeared on the Dragon’s Den.
Martin Cooke
As a Senior Consultant for ANGLE, Martin specialises in projects supporting high growth start-ups and SMEs, particularly involving universities. He is an experienced business mentor and is currently supporting companies across the UK with innovation exploitation, technology and business growth, most notably as Project Manager of the London SME Innovation Support Programme.
Martin is a Chartered Engineer and has an MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Much of his early career was spent as a practising design engineer in the high technology sector including managing a multi-million dollar international product line, where he had responsibility for new product definition, design and delivery to the marketplace, together with the ongoing support of existing products and an established customer base.
Akram Din
Akram Din
Akram has worked for Business Link London for nine years. In that time he has worked with hundreds of small and medium size businesses that have aspirations to grow and/or improve their profitability. Akram has worked across all sectors ranging from manufacturing, service companies (inc. business services) and wholesale and distribution throughout London. From a business planning and operations background, Akram now works with his many clients to undertake business reviews in all aspects of running a business, leading to agreed action plans to enable the business to move forward.
Shahriar Hossain
Shahriar Hossain
Shahriar is the Managing Director and founder of Catalyst. Shahriar has spent most of his career working within the Petroleum industry, specifically within the area of Exploration and Service sectors before starting up his own business consultancy. In his role as Managing Director and Consultant, Shahriar works across a broad spectrum of sectors on very diversified projects.
Steve Howey
Steve has been working with small businesses in East London for thirteen years, ten of these with Business Link London. During this time he has helped several hundred business owners from sole traders to larger organisations develop their ideas. For the past 2 ½ years Steve has been seconded to the London Development Agency helping owner managers deal with issues arising from relocating their companies to make way for the London 2012 Olympic Games development. Returning to Business Link London he now carries out reviews of clients businesses, and helps them put together plans to translate their ideas into action.
Louisa Moger
Louisa Moger has worked with Richard Edward Ltd since 2003 after working in media for ten years. Louisa manages the overall strategic planning and direction of Richard Edward in addition to overseeing the marketing function. Louisa sits on both the British Printing Industries Regional Board and the Made in London board and is currently studying at Ashridge Business School.
Ramez Mohabaty
Ramez Mohabaty
With over 10 years experience in providing a highly personalised service to a wide range of clients, Ramez Mohabaty is the principal partner of Best4business Accountants & Co. Ltd., and has been a practising accountant since 2003. He is a full member of both the Association of Accounting Technicians and the Association of Taxation Technicians, licensed to provide a full range of services to the general public. The range of services offered by the firm is extensive, and as principal, Ramez not only has to be qualified to supervise and deliver all work undertaken by the firm, but also has to maintain his knowledge and keep up-to-date with legislative changes through continuous professional development.
Abdul Rahim
Abdul Rahim is the Managing Director of Platinumlinks Limited and founded the company in March 2000. He has over 15 years experience in business and economic regeneration He graduated from the University of East London where he obtained his MBA. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Manufacture and Arts (RSA). Abdul is an entrepreneur and has been involved in several successful ventures and projects. His key skills are developing and maintaining successful partnerships and joint ventures. At Platinumlinks he is responsible for strategic planning and direction of the business. Abdul is on the board of London Metropolitan University and is a director of its subsidiary London Metropolitan Enterprises Ltd.
Denis Salamon
Denis is a Principal Consultant with ANGLE and has a BSc (Hons) Physics. He is a highly entrepreneurial individual with experience in many sectors, both public and private. He has in depth knowledge of business support infrastructures, knowledge transfer, the commercial development of SMEs and the delivery of SME business and technology mentoring. His early career was in the communication and electronic industry working in intellectual property exploitation, technology transfer, new product development and corporate manufacturing strategy. He was also responsible for managing EU and DTI funded R&D programmes and coordinating worldwide R&D and university consultancy activity. After leaving industry moved into business consultancy and has spent the last 14 years working primarily in business and new product development with businesses of every size. He has lectured widely on innovation and project management and specialises in identifying and developing new business opportunities for existing technologies.
Glenn Smith
Glenn Smith
Glenn is the founder and Managing Director of Erecruitment.com. Glenn has an impressive business track record, having started up and successfully grown a number of businesses in a diverse range of industries, ranging from engineering to recruitment. Glenn is a successful entrepreneur having sold off a number of his business ventures. During the past twenty years Glenn has established a reputation for being able to spot opportunities in the marketplace and developing high-performing business models that seek to maximise returns to investors.
Philip Wilkinson
Philip Wilkinson
Philip has worked for Business Link London for eight years. In that time he has worked with many hundreds of small businesses, from sole traders to multi employee enterprises, across all sectors of manufacturing and services in London. From a business to business sales and marketing background, Philip now works with his many clients to undertake business reviews in all aspects of running a business, leading to suggested and agreed action plans to drive the business forward.
