Rory Earley was appointed CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Capital for Enterprise in April 2008 following 4 years of advising the UK Government on the development and implementation of its venture capital programmes. Prior to that, he was Senior Investment Manager at Westport Private Equity Ltd, designing and investing in venture capital funds around the world. Rory was previously responsible for developing and implementing the UK Government’s first interventions in venture capital funds in the 1990s. He has been Chair of, and investor in a successful University spinout company, chair of an EU expert group on risk capital, member of the Investment TaskForce advising UK Government and was until recently also a Director of Greece's first venture capital investment company (TANEO).

Rory holds an MBA from Sheffield University.

Richard Hepper (Deputy Chief Executive)

Richard Hepper is the Deputy Chief Executive of Capital for Enterprise with specific responsibilities for business development, strategy and communications. He joined Capital for Enterprise in 2009. He has worked with growing companies throughout his career, having worked as a director of venture capital companies Oxford Capital and EV Group, and also worked with 3i, a world leader in private equity. Prior to moving into venture capital, Richard worked in consulting with Arthur D Little, assisting businesses across Europe with the development of strategy.

Richard is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and also holds a MA in Economics from Cambridge.

Alison Kirk (Office Manager / PA)

Alison runs the administration and facilities side of the business. She is the first point of contact for Capital for Enterprise and ensures all aspects of the office run smoothly.

Alison previously worked in the commercial property market where she ran the Business Centre at Sheffield City Airport for 6 years. She has also worked for Regus Business Centres in Leeds and Sheffield. She brings a wealth of office, facilities and people management experience to the business.

Alison will be returning to work in 2012 after a period of illness; her temporary replacement is Carrie Emmerson.

Judith Ozcan (MD Debt)

Judith joined CfEL in January 2009 as Director, Debt Markets and leads the company’s work on debt schemes, including delivering the Enterprise Finance Guarantee and SFLG schemes on behalf of BIS. Prior to joining CfEL, Judith was a Director with HBoS, where she undertook a number of front lending roles within Corporate Banking, specialising in recent years on lending to corporate companies within the property sector.

Prior to joining HBoS, Judith spent 10 years with Barclays, where she undertook a variety of roles including front line relationship management of corporate customers, credit sanctioning of lending proposals, project/change management and a one year secondment to the Barclays corporate office in Frankfurt.

Judith holds a BA Hons degree from Bradford University in European Studies, is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and holds an MBA from Durham University Business School.

Mark Hambly (Director Debt)

Mark Hambly is a director in CfEL's debt team, focussing on the delivery of the Enteprise Finance Guarantee scheme and its predecessor Small Firms Loan Guarantee (‘SFLG’). Prior to the establishment of CfEL he undertook a similar role within Government, having successfully led the Department’s transformation of SFLG in response to the recommendations of the Graham Review. Prior to becoming involved in SME finance Mark held a number of technical posts in the Department of Trade & Industry and in one of the Research Councils.

Mark is a Chartered Engineer with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Science from Loughborough University and a Master's degree from Cranfield University.

Deepak Kavi is the Senior Portfolio Manager for Capital for Enterprise with responsibility for the portfolio management function. He has worked in the private and public sector at senior level advising the Executive Team and the Board on performance and reporting matters.

Deepak is a Chartered Management Accountant and also holds a BSc honours degree in Accountancy and Financial Control.

Jason Middleton (Portfolio Manager)

Jason looks after portfolio reporting for Capital for Enterprise, having joined the company at its inception in 2007. His early career started in the civil service in the early 90's. During his near sixteen year tenure in the service Jason enjoyed a wide range of roles, commencing with four years involved in managing the Department's Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme (‘SFLG’), followed by a four year spell in the Employment Tribunals Service. In September 2000 Jason returned to an SME focus and was once more involved in managing Government ‘Access to Finance’ interventions, principally the Phoenix Fund programme of support to CDFIs. Success in this area has brought him to work with other equity gap programmes, together with SFLG.

Linda Oldfield (Senior Analyst)

Linda joined the Enterprise Directorate in May 2005 and has been responsible for statistics on SMEs and forecasting SFLG and now EFG. Linda joined the Government Statistical Service in 1990 working in a number of posts within the Civil Service, from forecasting of Government expenditure on Social Security benefits to cross sectoral business statistics and regional statistics. Prior to joining the Civil Service Linda was working as a Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer in a NHS Hospital, specialising in Microbiology.

Linda graduated from York University with a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics, she also has an MSc in Medical Statistics from the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London.

Sarah Grundy (Portfolio Monitoring Assistant)

Sarah works on the portfolio management side of the business and also provides valuable administrative support to the investment team. She has been with Capital for Enterprise since its inception.

Sarah worked for First Choice and Lloyds TSB prior to joining the Home Office in 2003 where she was responsible for the creation and maintenance of a number of systems providing management information on staff numbers and absenteeism. She transferred to the then Small Businesses Service in 2005 and was able to put her skills to good use in helping to develop the tools used to monitor the performance of the Government's equity interventions. Sarah graduated from Sheffield University in 1999 with a degree in Law.

Karl Fields (Portfolio Monitoring Assistant)

Karl works on the portfolio management side of the business and provides valuable administrative support to the investment team. He has been with Capital for Enterprise Ltd since January 2009.

Prior to joining CfEL Karl worked for Capita Insurance Services for 13 years. Whilst at Capita he was responsible for the creation and maintenance of the key reporting mechanism on the British Coal Health Contract. He established a substantial portfolio of reports that were distributed to the Senior Management team and clients.

Kath Bilinski (Finance Officer)

Kathleen joined Capital for Enterprise in March 2009 having worked as an Accounts Manager and Company Secretary at a finance company for the previous ten years.

In her role as Finance Officer at Capital for Enterprise, she provides support and assistance to the Manager.

Ken Cooper (MD Equity)

Ken has responsibility for CfEL's equity investment programmes. He has been managing investment programmes since 2002 when he developed a series of Early Growth Funds whilst responsible for the UK Government's SME access to finance activities. He also played a key role in the development of the Enterprise Capital Funds.

Ken graduated from Brunel University in 1994 with a B.Sc. in Economics and Business Finance and is a director of the British Business Angels Association.

Ian Connatty (Senior Investment Manager)

Ian qualified as an accountant with Ernst and Young, specialising in Corporate Taxation for banking and capital markets clients of the firm. From there he moved to the Financial Products Group at The Royal Bank of Scotland, where he became an Associate Director leading a team focused on financial analysis and execution support for property transactions. More recently, Ian was the Corporate Finance Manager for a high-growth property-backed data infrastructure company working on pricing, business planning and securing sources of capital for the business.

Ian holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Tim Mills (Senior Investment Manager)

Tim joined Capital for Enterprise in 2008 to assist the team with strategy before moving over to work as an Investment Manager on the equity programmes.

Tim started his career with Merrill Lynch in 1999, joining their graduate leadership programme to spend several years working in Europe, North America and Asia. Tim became an Associate Vice President in the technology group at Merrill before moving to Barclays Capital in 2005 to work on the integration of the firm's expanding global operations. More recently Tim has worked with a leading credit analytics consultancy and one the UKs largest hedge funds. He holds an SEC Series 7 qualification and is currently studying for the CFA. Tim has a B.Sc. in Business and Technology and holds a full-time MBA from Manchester Business School, where he specialised in Banking and Venture Capital.

Melanie Perkins (Lead Manager - Aspire)

Melanie joined Capital for Enterprise in 2009 to assist the Equity Team with the setup and management of The Aspire Fund. She also takes overall responsibility for portfolio management.

Melanie originally trained with 3i where she was responsible for investing in a wide range of business situations including management buyouts, start ups and growth capital and managing a portfolio of significant investments. As part 3i’s initiative to move away from investment in smaller companies, Melanie led a specialist portfolio team, based in the Midlands, to actively manage the ‘legacy’ investments and negotiate exits.

Melanie also has experience as a non executive director, on corporate finance work, and as a consultant working with other venture capital organisations, including running a business angel scheme in the North West.

Melanie holds an MA in physics from the University of Oxford.

Paul Fauset (Investment Manager)

Paul joined CfEL’s Debt Markets team in March 2010, moving to the Equity team in November 2011 as Investment Manager focussing on the Business Angel Co-Investment Fund.

Before joining CfEL Paul spent 7 years in corporate finance initially with KPMG Corporate Finance in Leeds and latterly with Hawsons Corporate Finance in Sheffield, where he specialised in SME finance. Prior to this Paul worked at Barclays Capital in London and New York.

Paul is a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute.  He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Nottingham where he was awarded a BSc in Geography and an MBA (with distinction).