Women in Business - Interview with Nina Sian

What is your job role? As Director of Slough Enterprise Gateway, my role is to support people starting up their own businesses. We do this through providing business advice, mentoring, seminars on business skills and making available cost effective office space in the early days of your business. We provide a complete range of services for entrepreneurs and young companies.

What is the best and the worst part of the job? The best part is helping people to establish their own business and the worst part is tackling the bureaucracy, which can be encountered from time to time in my work.

What has been your best achievement this year? This year my achievements have included two awards for the Slough Gateway Enterprise - the Prowess Flagship award and being nominated for and winning the SEEDA Professional Business Support award.

What advice would you give to Women in Business? My advice is to ‘get on and do it’! There are lots of organisations out there who are willing to support you, ours being one of them. We are happy for you to talk to us and we will give you the necessary support where we can and if we can’t we will help you to contact someone who will help with your specific need.

What is the essential tool in your job / work? For me it is the Gateway Enterprise model itself – it works in such a way that it provides the essential tools for learning, particularly for women starting their own businesses. The model accommodates specific requirements; seminars at the weekends, provision of childcare facilities, mentoring and coaching in business, assistance with business planning, help with overcoming barriers which many women encounter when setting up a new business. The success of this model has been replicated for other Gateway Enterprises within the South East region.

What is the greatest risk you’ve taken? In life – setting up my own business in the telecoms market several years ago. I learned so much running my own company and sadly when I had to close it down when the telecoms market went into decline.
In my current role at the Gateway – there have been several! I’m known to be a ‘maverick’ at times!

What can’t you live without? My children, they are now 18 and 16 and if they weren’t around, they would be the ‘missing link’ for me.

How do you fill your free time? Free time? When I have free time - cleaning – I find this acts as a good de-stressor! I also enjoy shopping with my daughter.

Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with? I really enjoy learning and I think if I was stuck in a lift for some time with someone I’d like it to be, Sir Alan Sugar. I believe I would learn a lot by talking to him.

Nina …thank you for your time.

Nina may be contacted via the Business in Berkshire network
http://www.businessinberkshire.co.uk/sloughgateway/contact.html

MF Notes
The Prowess Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Women's Enterprise Development were presented at the Gala dinner awards ceremony in Cardiff City Hall during the 3rd Annual Prowess Conference. The awards recognise and celebrate the achievement of individuals and organisations whose work has done so much in 2005 to help women succeed in business.
http://www.prowess.org.uk/AwardsinfoConference2006.htm
http://www.seeda.co.uk/news_&_events/press_releases/2006/20060222.asp

Worth knowing about …

Business desk space from £7 per day + VAT
Email: nina.sian@blbw.co.uk
Web: www.sloughenterprisegateway.co.uk