A business graduate, Hilary started her career in Manufacturing and IT, then spent 20 years as a Business Advisor supporting businesses in a broad range of sectors. These include manufacturing, finance, professional services, construction, and biomedical
Hilary has been instrumental in developing many growth, start-up, and pre-scale services into a primary source of high-quality business support, including working with HEI’s where she delivered highly successful specialist tailored support programmes into several Universities and 2 accelerator programmes which have been regularly profiled in the Scale Up Institute’s annual report.
In the last 3 years she has been the lead for several high-profile business support programmes, from bid stage, through to mobilisation then delivery & contractual management. She has demonstrated considerable acumen for overseeing complex programmes with challenging targets to a successful outcome.
In one sentence, what do you do at BIC?
I look for potential business opportunities for BIC – developing relationships with stakeholders, funders, and businesses, constructing proposals and tenders.
Tell me how you got started in your career?
My main career in the Business Support arena started with a chance conversation and introduction to S&E Cheshire TEC regarding a new entity for the UK – Business Link – Outlined my ideas on how Businesses could and should be supported and the rest is history as they say.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
As one door closes another one opens
In your opinion, what do most business get wrong?
I don’t believe in “getting it wrong”, mistakes can make us stronger and better, but only if we learn from them – the wrong element is not adequately planning and evaluating so the business doesn’t know what went wrong, where, when, or why
If you could choose a superpower, what would it be?
Goodness that’s a hard one – Time Travel
What are your key skills?
Being insightful, innovative, strategic, empathetic, intuitive, a problem solver, confident, and fair.
