MSc Enterprise & Entrepreneurship students are joined by UK Shadow Business Secretary & Virgin Money CEO

MSc Enterprise and Entrepreneurship students, including those who had intercalated from the Medicine Plus programme, presented to Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and David Duffy, CEO of Virgin Money. This event was part of the new Virgin Money Levelling Upstarts programme.

This programme was created by Virgin Money to match SMEs with MBA and Masters students from top ranking university business schools. CEES at the University of Leeds was involved with this programme from it’s inception as part of its engaged approach to entrepreneurship education for students and support for SMEs.

Jonathon and David attended a session where a group of Masters students showcased their key recommendations to Andy Jenkins, one of the participating SME owners.

The Shadow Business Secretary commented:

Businesses are facing mounting costs and challenges so it was fantastic to come to Leeds today and see the power of investing in supporting small businesses. It was also a pleasure to hear from the businesses and students themselves on their reflections on the commercial challenges they are working with.

The event was chaired by Professor Edgar Meyer, Deputy Dean of the Business School and attended by Professor Sarah Underwood, Director for External Engagement, Dr Richard Tunstall, Director of Enterprise and Peter Gittins, Teaching Fellow in entrepreneurship. Also joining the event were students from the award winning entrepreneurship support service SPARK.

Levelling Upstarts provides growing businesses with focused business advice and recommendations from the MBA and Business Masters students while also offering business leaders of the future a unique opportunity to put their training into practice.

Dr Tunstall commented:

It’s important that we provide opportunities like this for our students to work alongside industry professionals and gain experience and insight from entrepreneurs and people who have been there and done it. At the same time you can see that the participating businesses gained immensely from the opportunity to work with students, who gave them different perspectives and bold innovative ideas.

A final thank you from the CEES team to everyone who attended the event.

Find out more about Levelling Upstarts.