Bridging the generation gap

Adopted North Easterner and honorary Swedish Consul Caroline Theobald has many passions in her life, not least education, entrepreneurship and unlocking the potential of the next generation of business owners and leaders. But, she tells Jane Hall, her biggest achievement has been fostered well away from the boardroom

It takes Caroline Theobald a while to decide how to describe herself. Is she an entrepreneur? A networker? Connector? Facilitator? “Good question,” she says as she mulls over the answer. “I don’t know! What does my Twitter bio say?”

She delves into her bag, produces her phone and opens her Twitter account. “’Chair, facilitator, connector and NED. Passionate about enterprise, start-ups, scale-ups and making a difference.’ Does that help?"

She adds that 'connector' is probably the best one-word answer she can offer, making her living from expediting introductions between those more reticent than herself.

In business, there is a huge difference between being aware of someone and actually understanding what it is they do and how that understanding could be mutually beneficial.People from all walks of life also have a tendency to congregate with those they already know at meetings, conferences, and social occasions and this is where an exuberant, approachable and insatiably curious person like Theobald can make all the difference.

Being a professional connector is something she fell into by accident, but quickly discovered she had an talent for. She is probably best known for establishing the Bridge Club, which launched around the same time in April 2000 as the dot-com bubble burst and the stock markets crashed. The club’s purpose was to make connections, mainly between early-stage businesses, money, management and new markets. Theobald had worked for the leadership charity, Common Purpose, which started in the North East nearly 30 years ago and now operates across the globe, and had built up a strong network.

Despite the volatility of the markets at the time – or perhaps because of it – Theobald says the Bridge Club “just went per-whoosh. We did well very quickly. It had quite a high profile and we were doing interesting things.”

Over the years, the business has successfully introduced thousands of people and given them access to a wealth of new contracts, mentors and leadership teams, fostering partnerships and investment. Bridge Club is now a vehicle for Theobald’s consultancy, while it has developed into a new company called FIRST Face to Face, which connects young people and start-ups to the business community. Theobald co-owns it with “its youthful MD, Charlotte Windebank,” an English and Media graduate from Hexham who was working in a café when the pair met in 2012.

“We started working together and thought it would be a good idea to do something different with Bridge Club, so that rather than being led by old people, young people would be in charge and skills could be passed on to young people. If that worked, we might be able to reinvigorate and breathe new life into the Bridge Club - so that is what we did. FIRST is gaining traction now and has three strands, FIRST Startup, which builds enterprise skill development through workshops, networking events, competitions and business accelerator programmes, including the annual If We Can You Can challenge; FIRST Face to Face, an online events resource and networking event management consultancy; and FIRST Breakthrough, which is a youth-led Community Interest Company which launched this September connecting 14-30-year-olds to jobs, training and qualifications.”

FIRST Breakthrough also offers careers advice for schools, further and higher education, work experience placements, course programmes, apprenticeships, traineeships and internships, as well as a raft of services to businesses and organisations such as assessment of company culture - looking at whether organisations fit the needs and values of millennial and generation Z workforces. Theobald proudly adds it has placed 90 youngsters with SMEs for work experience since March this year.

She describes FIRST as “the daughter of the Bridge Club run by a 32-year-old, which is absolutely as it should be. I’ll be 61 in September. I’m too old to be doing this sort of thing.” Which is untrue, of course. Theobald has great empathy for young people, believes passionately in nurturing young talent, and dislikes the disapproval sometimes directed at today’s youth. “People talk about young people in a very negative way. I believe if you give young people the respect you would want yourself, and if you listen to them, you will find we actually have very talented young people in this region. They just need to have opportunities.

“I have used my company as a learning place for young people. Being able to listen to people and being able to convert that listening into something useful is, I believe, really important.”

Theobald is aware that her attitude is sometimes a little out of kilter, and it was her late husband, Alan Morse, who told her: “Don’t think that everybody thinks like you, because they don’t.”

Looking back, she says: “It was the biggest lesson I learnt from Alan.” He played a big part in Theobald’s life, although their time together was brief. Indeed, she says meeting him, “has reflected on everything I have done. My life really started when I arrived in the North East. I was desperately unhappy. When I was in London I earned lots of money, but I was miserable. I was arrogant and I was selfish. Then I came up here, met Alan, and he gave me focus and a purpose. He opened doors for me. He is what rooted me when I didn’t have any roots.”

She grew up in Surrey and attended boarding school. One of five siblings, her father was an entrepreneur involved in tea importing and later property. After studying English literature at York University, she got a job with Haymarket Publishing in London and fell into a reporting role on the unglamorous-sounding Litho Printer Week. She then went to work as a news editor on Printing World, and thought she was heading for a career in journalism. One day she interviewed the late newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell and before long found herself employed as his press officer - on quadruple her old salary. She professes to have liked the man, later generally accepted to be an abominable human being, but admits she “didn’t understand half of what was going on.” They parted company when he took over the Mirror and he said he would either make her MD of one of his printing companies, or his head of PR. “I said I couldn’t do either of them.”

I have used my company as a learning place for young people

Still in her twenties, Theobald was hired as a marketing manager by an architect’s firm. She became involved in the community architecture movement, and after one or two more twists and turns found herself working for the Free Form Arts Trust creative regeneration agency in North Shields, which is where she met Alan, a 6ft 8in tall commercial fisherman based on the fish quay. “That was a baptism of fire! We met, got married and I took on his two young children from a previous marriage. He was away 10 days out of every 14. Then five years after we met he had a heart attack at sea and died aged 46.”

It says much about Theobald that the children continued living with her and that they remain close. It perhaps explains her empathy towards young people and the struggles they can face.

Aside from the Bridge Club and FIRST, her business interests over the years have been wide-ranging and have seen her awarded both a CBE and a Queen’s Award for Enterprise. In 2007 she was appointed the Honorary Swedish Consul for the North East and chair of the regional Chapter of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce. It’s a role in which her networking skills have proved useful, and has helped her build trade as well as cultural connections with the Nordic country.

Her own links with North East England Chamber of Commerce through the Bridge Club and now via FIRST are invaluable. “It is about being able to connect businesses and opportunities and knowledge. If you don’t know who to ask, the things that should happen don’t. The Chamber gives you a far bigger intro to the business pool, and is a real force for good.”

Ask Theobald what has been her own force for good in the 30 years she has been in the North East, and her answer has nothing to do with business. “The fact I was able to bring up two children as a single parent. It was bloody tough, but I'm proud I was able to give them the opportunities they had, and for them to think of me as their mum, even though they already have one, and that I have equal status.

“Nothing can make me feel more proud than that my children, who aren’t my children, still want me to be their mum.”