Mayor Steve Rotheram yesterday announced appointments to a new Business and Enterprise Board for the Liverpool City Region.

The new board takes over the role of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) in providing a voice for business in the area.

Business leaders from across the city region and its key growth sectors have been named on the new board. Amongst them is CEO of Baltic Creative CIC, Lynn Haime; plus business leaders from our community including Ruth Hartnoll, CEO of Matchstick Creative, and Jennifer Van Der Merwe, director of Kindred LCR CIC.

The appointments follow an extensive recruitment process, carried out over recent months, which attracted applications from 65 high-calibre candidates. In appointing the Board, the Combined Authority worked hard to ensure gender balance, ethnic diversity, and geographic representation across all six areas of the Liverpool City Region.

Speaking about the new Board, Mayor Rotheram said:

“Thriving local businesses are the backbone of our economy and, for our area to flourish, we need them to succeed. Through our new Business and Enterprise Board, we have pulled together a team that boasts decades of hands-on experience at leading organisations and, it’s my hope, that their knowledge and insight will help us to join-up our thinking with fresh ideas to grow our economy. I want the Liverpool City Region to be the home of ‘good’ business and I’m looking forward to seeing where the Board will take us on our journey to making our area the best place in the country to live, work and run a business in.”

Under plans approved by the Combined Authority (CA) this year, the new Business and Enterprise Board acts as a key means of engaging the CA with the local business community. Bringing the business voice directly into the CA’s policy-making processes will enable it to work more closely and directly with businesses, especially those in industry clusters that will be of critical importance to the future success of the city region economy.

Board Members

  • David Meyerowitz (Chair) – Chief Executive of Haier Europe
  • Ruth Hartnoll (Deputy Chair) – Co-founder and CEO of Matchstick Creative
  • Rachael Baker – Managing Director of JJ Smith & Co.
  • Lynn Haime – CEO of Baltic Creative CIC
  • Rachael Hennigan – Principal and CEO of Hugh Baird College
  • Mohammed Tawhidul Islam – Managing Director of Islam & Co. Chartered Accountants
  • Prof. Tim Jones – Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool
  • Trevor Leeks – Operations Director at JLR Halewood
  • Melanie Lewis – CEO of Shakespeare North
  • Prof. Mark Power – Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of LJMU
  • Utubakwu Michael Ushie – CEO of Prime Atlantic
  • Jennifer Van Der Merwe – Director of Kindred LCR CIC
  • Ruth Wood – Interim CEO of Mersey Maritime

Co-opted Members

  • Dom Potter – Managing Director at Low Carbon Business School
  • Prof. Katherine Royse – Director at Hartree Centre
  • Elliot Street – CEO and Co-founder of Inovus Medical

The Board’s first formal meeting will be in October. You can find out more here. 

NB: This article is an extract of a press release. Read the full version here.