Lesley Hawke

Business Support Specialist Lesley Hawke brings a passion for SME growth and an understanding of business development, marketing strategy and overseas markets to the Programme Team.
Following her Business Studies education, her background includes Publication/Media advertising for the sports and education Sector as well as running her own business for 7 years. She is also a current member of the Institute of Export and holds a Foundation Award in International Trade from the British Chambers of Commerce.

In the last 6 years she has supported North East SMEs in her roles at the Department for Business and Trade (was DIT), at the Tees Valley Combined Authority as well as Membership Manager of NEPIC the Cluster organisation for the Process Sector supporting businesses across the North East and UK. All those roles allowed her to work closely with businesses to understand their growth strategy, their challenges and see their vision in order to facilitate their growth and in recent times she also helped North East Businesses navigate Brexit and supported business owners through the COVID pandemic.

With an extensive business network behind her, Lesley is often busy introducing businesses to each other to help establish strong peer to peer connections and most importantly encouraging localised business connectivity especially within the supply chain sector.