THE power to change is something I’m sure we all aspire to have in our lives.

I was lucky enough to hear some outstanding examples of North East people from different businesses who have used this power to great effect at our Inspiring Females conference last week.

The aim of the event was to provide a platform for great examples of work in our region to help eradicate gender bias and celebrate the achievements of women in business.

Without exception the speakers were completely frank about their careers and the challenges they had overcome to get to their current position.

One of those speaking, Laura Middleton, from Sunderland-based The Office Rocks certainly showed she wasn’t afraid of change. She had to adapt her community marketing business model following the Cambridge Analytica scandal which made some of her clients reluctant to use Facebook.

Her go-getting attitude made her roll her up sleeves and use Linked-In much more, with excellent results. She shared tips from her own work with the guests to encourage others to be bold and even sassy in their digital media posts to bring out their personalities and increase engagement, bringing new business as a result.

Conference guests also heard from Kevin Haynes about his extraordinary personal route to his current career as Greggs’ head of learning and development.

His passion for fairness was based on an early experience of being in hospital with a Buddhist who taught him martial arts and not to be greedy with knowledge and share it widely.

This background has led him to playing an important part in Greggs development of women within their workforce, which encourages them to move into management positions and be the very best they can be in the business.

There are an increasing number of our members such as Virgin Money, who kindly sponsored the conference, who are making enormous strides to reduce the gender pay gap as well as supporting female colleagues.

It is vitally important all our regional businesses work to reduce the gender pay gap and help eradicate unconscious and conscious bias in the workplace. We know that there are many women in the North East who, for a range of reasons, are not reaching their potential, and we need them to be able to contribute to our success.

Let’s all embrace the Power to Change and exploit every opportunity to grow our economy, with both men and women equally.