I’m Jo Elliott. I started my selling career at a young age in car sales at what was ‘Cowies ‘ in Middlesbrough.

 

From there I went on to work in sales for Scottish & Newcastle Brewery, I swapped beer for chemicals and joined Jeyes (as in Jeyes Fluid & Bloo loo,) managing accounts such as Morrisons , B&Q, and Asda. 

 

At 30 I decided I wanted to be on the other side of the counter and joined my partner in his clothes shop business in Cambridge and ran that for a year before going back to what I loved working with the retailers Asda, Tesco, Morrisons etc. 

 

I knew by then that I wanted to  work for companies that would make a difference  so I went to consult at a  very small  baby food company set up by Lizzie Vann in Bournemouth ( Organix),  I was due to be there 6 months but I stayed for 15 years , I loved it , I saw it grow from 200k to 42 million and was part of the team that lobbied the government to take additives out of children’s food and the  Jamie Oliver campaign to  improve school dinners, plus Organix brought healthy snacking to the baby fixture when previously the only choice was a rusk!

 

I finally left as I had moved back to the North East and the commute to Bournemouth weekly was taking its toll and I’d just had my second child at 40 so wanted to be closer to home.

 

But my heart is always with start ups, entrepreneurs and promoting women in business, something which I’ve been very lucky to be involved with. 

 

After the big 40,  I freelanced for a few years working in events with event planners and venues, I then stepped back into employment with Nestle selling Kit Kat, but my heart wasn’t with the corporates, so I went back to freelancing and now have the pleasure of working for Three Motion video production, which sees me helping create videos for small start ups, charities such as CEO sleep out and large corporations like Caterpillar, alongside this I also work for another startup organic halal baby food company Olivers Cupboard.

 

Personally, I live in Saltburn, have two children, boy and girl, and can be found at least once a day on the beach (normally very early) with Derek, our rescue bull lurcher.