Graham Sleep

After starting his career as an Engineer in Mechatronics in the automotive industry, Graham delivered a highly successful career in trouble-shooting for corporate divisions, eventually leading North American operations of an Automotive tier 1 from $30Mn - $300Mn of acquisition-fuelled growth, and developing a number of Asia-based strategic alliances before returning to the North-East and leading year on year double digit growth as GM/MD designate of a manufacturing SME. Instead of taking on the full-time role of MD, he set off to build his own international consultancy business (based out of Scotland) which gave verifiable support on many large long-term global consultancy projects to corporates and blue-chips for 8 years, before supporting growth in over 80 SMEs (5 of them with 10 x multi £million growth within 3-4years) since.

During his international consultancy phase, he became an accredited Corporate Executive Coach to senior leaders in this space, and concentrated on his specialist knowledge in areas such as Strategic Operational Excellence (Six Sigma MBB), Innovation and commercialisation, as well as people and culture development for areas such as Manufacturing, Engineering, and Service-based organisations.

He was awarded EF Business Mentor of the Year in the North-East in 2019-20, and is currently a strategic advisor (NED) to a host of businesses from £250k-£200Mn. He is also currently Vice-Chair for Durham Business Group which led to him working part-time with RTC North and the Durham Growth Programme. After suffering long-term illness himself, he also gives pro-bono support and advice to a number of national and local CICs and charities in areas close to his heart; education, entrepreneurship, and disability, as well as being active in his local church.