Reduce Costs Webinar - Yorkshire and Humber - Speakers

Simon Drury
Envirowise

Simon Drury is the Business Partnerships Director for the Envirowise Project. This is a role he has held since 2006. Simon is responsible for the development and delivery of the Envirowise Large Business engagement strategy. He project manages a number of projects with large businesses and is a spokesperson for the wider Envirowise Project.

Simon has specialist skills in all aspects of corporate environmental management, to include corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, resource efficiency, waste management, and environmental management systems.

Prior to this Simon was the UK Environmental Manager for the Center Parcs Ltd (a UK Sustainable tourism destination). A post he held for seven years. Within this role Simon was responsible for all aspects of the four UK village's Environmental, Energy, sustainability and CSR strategies, including the company's ISO14001 certification.

Simon went to college as a mature student and gained his BSc Honour from Leeds University in 1997, he is an Associate Member of IEMA, Founder Chair of the EMRA's Promoting Sustainable Development Group, which works to drive forward the sustainable development and climate charge agenda with five counties. He is a member of the Regional Energy Group.

He sits on his regional CBI's Environment Committee. Simon is committed to showing businesses that the environmental consideration makes good business sense.

Simon is married to Susan and has two teenage daughters, Abbie and Megan. In his spare time Simon is a keen naturalist, he enjoys sailing and fly-fishing, which he does not do as much as he would like.

Helen West
Business Link Yorkshire

Helen is the Chief Executive for Business Link Yorkshire. Helen was the Chief Executive of Business Link York and North Yorkshire, from its beginning in 1995 through to April 2008, and was instrumental in leading it to become one of the top performing Business Links in the country.

Born in Harrogate, Helen graduated from the University of Bristol with a BSc in Psychology. Returning to Yorkshire, Helen worked in a variety of roles in occupational psychology, personnel and training, including working as a Careers Officer in Bradford with the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative and as a Senior Psychologist for the MSC in Sheffield. Before her work with Business Link, Helen spent five years with North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) as Head of Strategy and Development.

Richard Barnard
Envirowise

Richard originally qualified as a chemist and has over 30 years experience in the environmental field, especially dealing with regulatory, water and waste issues for industrial and commercial clients. He is Technical Director at Ashact, a division of Hyder Consulting, which specialises in solving environmental problems for industry and commerce, particularly through process improvement and waste minimisation prior to abatement or treatment.

Richard's experience includes a wide range of commercial and non-manufacturing activities (eg schools, hospitals, retail parks, etc) and his industrial expertise includes pulp and paper, food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering, plastics and textile/tanning.

He has been a member of the Envirowise Helpline Panel since 1994 and Ashact involved in preparing material for Envirowise since 1995.

Matthew is the head of the Envirowise Retail, Food   Drink Team. Within this role he is responsible for ensuring that the Envirowise service meet the needs of the retailers, commercial companies (banks etc) and food manufacturers.

Prior to working for Envirowise, Matthew worked as an environmental consultant as well as working in the local authority waste management sector.

Lisa Mattsson
Envirowise

Lisa Mattsson is the Regional Manager for Envirowise South East region and has a background in environmental consultancy and key account management. As a Regional Manager on the Envirowise programme Lisa has responsibility for coordinating the South East Envirowise delivery as well as maximising the awareness of Envirowise services and the benefits of recourse efficiency to businesses in the region. She works closely with key business support organisations, e.g. Business Link and the Sustainable Business Advisors in each county, as well as SEEDA, the regional development agency.

Her areas of expertise include resource and economic efficiency, environmental policy, Carbon Reduction Commitment, carbon and energy management, sustainable procurement, project management and facilitation of large government programmes as well as key account management.