Advisory Board
We are so fortunate to have a brilliant team of professionals on the Enterprising Child Advisory Board, guiding and supporting our work. Thank you to:
Sue Atkins - internationally known parenting expert, writer, speaker, broadcaster, and author of the Amazon best selling books 'Parenting Made Easy - How to Raise Happy Children' & 'Raising Happy Children for Dummies' (the black and yellow series). Sue has authored the highly acclaimed Parenting Made Easy MP3s, CDs and Workbooks, and The Secrets To Well Behaved Kids App.
Sue is the ITV This Morning parenting expert and regularly appears on BBC Breakfast television, The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2. She has her own regular 'Ask Sue' Parenting Q & A phone- in on BBC Radio Surrey and Sussex once a month, has published articles across the world from China to Poland, and has delivered workshops abroad including India and Dubai. Sue was a Deputy Head & Class Teacher for 22 years and is Ambassador for Home-Start Charity - the UK's leading family support organisation offering friendship and practical help to families with children under 5.
Dr Amanda Gummer - UK's leading expert on play, play development and child development. Amanda has been helping children and families for over 20 years. She is regularly in the media and takes an active role in research, presenting a paper at the International Toy Research Association's World Congress in Portugal in July 2014.
Amanda is often involved in government policy around children's issues, contributing to the Bailey Report and the Childhood Inquiry. Amanda ran the research consultancy FUNdamentals for 10 years before combining that with the Good Toy Guide, the online play advice website that she set up in 2012, and the Good App Guide to create Fundamentally Children.
Priya Desai - London based independent speech and language therapist and children's author. Priya has been working as a Speech and Language Therapist for 10 years, graduating in 2004 from UCL with a BSc in Speech Sciences. She started off her career working for the NHS, providing therapy at a secondary school for children with moderate learning difficulties and also within community clinics. For the last 8 years she has been working as an independent practitioner. Priya works in two schools within London, in addition to working with children within their home environment.
Priya is a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC). In 2010, she wrote two children's books: Benjamin Writer-Messy and Jake Monkey-Tail, both of which support children with their developing literacy skills.
Dipesh Patel - Formerly an Operations Strategy Consultant at KPMG, now a Global HR Information and Analytics Director at Unilever, Dipeshhas worked with companies from FTSE100 to SMEs across retail, consumer goods, travel & leisure and oil & gas industries over the last 10 years.
He brings to the Advisory Board a wealth of international experience in the areas of identifying cost and growth opportunities, new market entrance, and financial, commercial and operational due diligence projects on Mergers and Acquisition transactions.
Dipesh has a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics and Management) from University College London and is a Chartered Accountant from ICAEW, UK.
Phil Benson - Entrepreneur, Educator, Business speaker, Passion for social enterprise. Phil Co-Founded Xing Smoothies in 2006 after graduating from University of Hull. Since then the business has scaled rapidly and now runs three successful and distinct businesses which includes a high street outlet (Shambles Kitchen) and an Education focused social enterprise
Phil’s passion is all about inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs and enterprising young people and has worked with and supported 1000’s of students over the past 8 years through mentoring, talks, enterprise days and setting up real-life, student-led and managed smoothie bar businesses in UK schools through Xing Education project.
