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Gender and Entrepreneurship speaker profiles

Maggie O'Carroll, The Women's Organisation

Starting her career in the United States, Maggie moved to Liverpool in 1991 where she successfully ran her own management consultancy business working with a range public, private and third sector organisations. In 1996 she founded The Women's Organisation to address issues hindering female enterprise policy and practice development. She has led its development as an award winning women's economic development agency and social enterprise since its inception and it is now the largest dedicated Women's Economic Development Agency in the UK.

Maggie has recently led the creation of a £5.2m Women's International Centre for Economic Development based in Liverpool hosting business support, incubation, education, research and policy development services. She is responsible for the overall strategic development of the business and has been actively involved in women's economic development policy influencing on an international, national and regional basis.

She is a Business graduate with a Masters in Community Enterprise from the Judge Business School, Cambridge University. Maggie also lectures part time at Liverpool University Management School on Entrepreneurship and Liverpool John Moores University, on Measuring Social Impact within their Masters in Social and Community Enterprise programmes. She is an Entrepreneurial Scholar in residence at Simmon's Collage Boston and is chairperson of Knowlesy Housing Trust Services Ltd a local RSL social enterprise with 250 employees and an annual turnover exceeding £7m. She is a regular contributor to conferences in the UK, and aboard, on issues relating to women's education, employment and entrepreneurship and social enterprise.

Professor Susan Marlow, University of Birmingham

Professor Susan Marlow FRSA, is Professor of Entrepreneurship at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham; she is a holder of the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion, Editor of the International Small Business Journal and Vice President for Research at the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Susan has been a Visiting Professor at several North American universities and is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds. Her research interests lie in the broad area of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviours with a particular focus upon the influence of gender upon entrepreneuring, high technology business incubation, identity work and business closure/failure; this work has been published extensively in a range of peer reviewed UK and North American Journals.

In conjunction with Professor Colette Henry, Susan Marlow is Editor of the Routledge series of Master Texts on Entrepreneurship and the Emerald/ISBE series of texts on Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Behaviour and she has frequently worked with other EU offices upon female entrepreneurship and employment relations in SMEs.

Dr Richard Tunstall, Leeds Enterprise Centre

Richard is Lecturer in Enterprise at Leeds Enterprise Centre and member of the Board of Trustees for the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE). His current research interests include entrepreneurial behaviour, particularly in relation to enterprise education and how SME's and spin-out businesses develop in through open innovation.

Dr Sally Jones, Leeds Enterprise Centre

Sally is a Teaching Fellow in Enterprise at Leeds Enterprise Centre, supporting enterprise education opportunities across the University of Leeds. Her research interests include gender and entrepreneurship generally and she has a particular interest in gender and entrepreneurship education in HE; entrepreneurship education policy discourse; and the historical and political development of entrepreneurship policy and theory.  Sally is also a member of the Organising Committee for the Gender and Enterprise Network Special Interest Group (GEN SIG), recently created through the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE).