Home / Mentoring

Fusion Highland Champions

We are delighted to announce an exciting new initiative, provided through the generosity and commitment of some of the Highlands and Islands' top entrepreneurs.

Seven of these top entrepreneurs have formed themselves into the "Fusion Highland Champions", to champion the cause of greater entrepreneurship in the region. As part of this goal they have created a "Time Bank", making themselves available to other owner/managers who would find it beneficial to have access to them for informal advice and mentoring, encouragement and connections.

The Fusion Highland Champions are offering this service on a purely voluntary basis, and I am sure you will appreciate both the generosity and the value of what they are making available. In order to make the best use of their time, we would ask you to follow these guidelines:

1. All requests for assistance from the Fusion Highland Champions will be filtered through Fusion and so should be submitted to us by email (to paula@fusionlinking.co.uk) in the first instance.

2. Requests should normally be related to your plans for innovation and entrepreneurship, rather than day-to-day management issues. (If your request does not qualify for forwarding to the Fusion Highland Champions, we will - with your permission - endeavour to link you with someone else in the area who may be able to help you.)

3. All advice will be given on a purely voluntary and informal basis, and the Fusion Highland Champions will not be liable for any loss or other difficulties that arise as a result of your accepting it.

4. The advice/mentoring offered by the Fusion Highland Champions will be limited to 1-2 hours to begin with. Any time offered over and beyond this limit is purely at the discretion of the individual Champion.

5. It is a condition of participating in this scheme that you do NOT use the opportunity to give the Champions a sales pitch.

The Fusion Highland Champions consist of the following entrepreneurs:

Sandy Catto
Sandy was born in Beauly in 1939 and was educated at Beauly JS School, Inverness Royal Academy and EMI College of Electronics. He started out working for the family business, doing everything from TV engineering to erecting aerials, and from mechanics to driving lorries, before starting in business on his own account in 1976.

His current business interests include bark processing, road haulage and distribution, port services, shipping, property, and more.

Outside work, his interests include a passion for football.

Campbell Grant
Campbell attended Portree High School and Glasgow University, where he studied Electronic Engineering, before training with Britoil/BP in the offshore oil industry as a control systems engineer. He took a career gap and spent 2 years travelling in the Far East and Australia, where his real education took place. On his return, he settled back on his native Isle of Skye and worked on underwater systems before starting his first company, Bambi Engineering Ltd, to provide consultancy services to the oil industry. Several systems crucial to the UK's oil flow were designed on his remote croft. After a spell teaching technology, Campbell incorporated his next company, Gael.net Ltd, in 1994, when he spotted the commercial opportunity of the newly invented World Wide Web.

Gael.net grew quickly to become the leading web development company in the Highlands, winning many awards for innovation and business growth. Always quick to spot emerging market trends, Campbell rebranded the company as Sitekit to focus on developing software for managing large web sites. This enabled the business to successfully expand beyond the Highlands, with sales to larger organisations throughout the UK, including government departments and multinational corporations. Sitekit is currently establishing a partner network to compete outwith the UK to sustain its growth.

Campbell has a vision of Skye becoming a world-class software centre. He is passionate about helping his native island economy to develop and retain more of its young people, which is why he offered his services as a Fusion Champion.

Iain MacGregor
Iain graduated from the Robert Gordon University in 2003 with 1st class Honours and the Hughes Christensen award for best business school graduate. Following a spell as a cost accountant with Shell Expro in Aberdeen, he returned to the Highlands to join Global Highland, a family-owned business specialising in Recruitment and Employment Services. In the four years since joining Global, Iain has supported the growth of the organisation from a turnover of £7 million in 2003 to £26 million in 2006. As its Managing Director in 2006, Iain accepted the award for the "Highlands and Islands Business of the Year", presented by former First Minister Jack McConnell in recognition of Global Highland's success in the Highland market. In 2007 the company started targeting international markets and it has already built up a business servicing the civil construction sector in Dubai, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain.

Iain's role extends beyond Global Highland as a director of the Global Resources Group. Following its inception in 2005, Global Resources has experienced tremendous growth, from a start-up to a major international service company with a forecast turnover of £100 million in 2007/08. Its service profile includes recruitment and resource management, engineering and fabrication services, specialist pipeline and spool-base contracting, quality management consultancy and supply chain management. Its client base includes those in the drilling, subsea, production support, petrochemical, M.O.D., rail, utilities, civil/construction and renewable energy sectors.

At 25 years old, Iain has a particular interest in supporting young entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the Highlands.

Angela Paterson
Angela was a director of the Entrepreneurial Exchange for four years, is passionate about supporting new enterprise and recently project managed the publication of the book Portraits of Inspiration, an Exchange project celebrating entrepreneurial achievements in Scotland.

Angela set up her first business, Kite Ltd, eight years ago and recently sold the company to Head Resourcing, one of Scotland's leading HR and Recruitment specialists. During 2006 she set up a web-based company based in Inverness called HiJobs.co.uk - already the leading job board for the Highlands and Aberdeen. The company has a team of 6 based throughout Scotland and is expected to turnover more than £1m within 2 years of trading.

In addition to her ongoing roles as Managing Director of HiJobs.co.uk and Non Executive Director of Head Resourcing she is an active networker both in Central and North Scotland. Angela has a home in Edinburgh and Nairn and spends her time divided between the two (on the A9!!), and has an 8 year old daughter, Katie.

David Sutherland
David Sutherland is a leading Scottish businessman who received the CBE in 2006 for his services both to construction and charity. He is chairman and major shareholder of Tulloch Ltd, a house-building and property development group with a £60 million turnover and involvement with developments as far south as the London area. In September 2006 David and his family sold their controlling interest in Tulloch Construction Ltd, whose construction, civil engineering and building services divisions have a £107 million turnover, to Rok plc. David is a non-executive member of the Rok board.

Inverness born, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and served in the business development department of Highlands and Islands Development Board. In December 1979 he was headhunted by Tulloch as Group Accountant. When the family interests sold out to Alfred McAlpine plc in 1985, David was appointed Finance Director of McAlpine's Worldwide Minerals Division. In 1988 he led a successful MBO and became Managing Director of Tulloch Group, then becoming Chairman in 1997. From a £10 million turnover in the first buyback year, it grew steadily to a £160 million turnover in 2005-06. In 2001 David received the top award from the Chartered Institute of Building, Scotland, for his services to the construction industry.

A founder shareholder of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC, he stood down as club chairman in August 2006. He has interests in smaller business including agriculture and tourism. He founded the Highland Homeless at Christmas Trust, raising private sector funding to launch the first night shelter north of Aberdeen. To mark Tulloch's 75th anniversary in 2000, he formed a Tulloch Charitable Trust to divert a portion of annual profits to selected charities. It has given £600,000 to worthy causes in the past six years.

Peter Swanson
Currently Executive Chairman of Alchemy Plus, Peter is a successful entrepreneur with over 20 years' experience as investor and senior board member with various organisations in the oil industry and other sectors. These appointments include MacGregor Energy Services, Global Highland, Norcom and the Highland Hospice. Companies under his stewardship have won awards for fast growth, both in UK and international markets, and have realised profitable exits for investors. An experienced HR and finance practitioner, he has been accountable for the operations of companies spanning the full business spectrum, from small start-ups through to large organisations with over 1500 employees. A skilled negotiator, he has been involved at high levels with major oil companies (he was one of oil giant BP's first full alliance partners) and other industry blue chips.

His negotiation skills extend beyond commerce to labour relations and he has successfully delivered innovative working agreements in partnership with national trade unions. He has championed and led various change management and business process improvement projects and has shown himself to be skilled in effecting culture change and personnel development with diverse employee groups. In addition to his own companies he currently acts as consultant on business process optimisation to a number of leading Highland businesses.

Caroline Whitfield
Caroline Whitfield is Chief Executive Officer of Blackwood Distillers and is an entrepreneur and business developer. Since graduating from Oxford University in 1986 she has gained wide experience in global marketing and management, particularly in the international food and drink sector. Following an MBA at INSEAD, France, she has held international positions with Unilever plc, was Pan-European Business Head of Hasbro, and has acted as advisor to Diageo plc on new business development. She is a judge of the Queen's Award for Innovation and has held non-executive roles in both government and charitable organizations. She has the ability to engender collaborative change in both fast-moving and highly conservative organizations and has experience of working with both public and private sector bodies.

Although originally form northern Canada, Caroline has strong Scottish and Scandinavian links so feels a great personal affinity with Shetland, where her business, Blackwood Distillers, is based. Under her leadership Blackwood Distillers has won an unprecedented 26 international awards in 24 months, including Scottish Exporter of the Year 2005 and New Exporter of the Year 2005. Caroline was also named as Drinks Businesswoman of the Year 2005. She is mother to three young girls, aged 10, 8 and 4. She is particularly interested in contributing to efforts to lift the rate of new venture creation in the Highlands & Islands region, particularly in the area of consumer goods, and can mix a mean martini.

__________________________________

Our thanks go to all of them for their generosity and commitment to sharing with other business owner-managers the knowledge they have gained . This is a unique opportunity to benefit from direct input from top-class entrepreneurs, and we are sure that you will make the very most of it and derive a huge amount of benefit from it.

Please address all queries to Paula Kirby in the first instance: 01463 667302 / paula@fusionlinking.co.uk