Meet The Team

Jon heads the Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority's Growth Hub, a business support initiative that offers free and impartial information advice & guidance to both pre-start individuals and businesses of any size or sector across the region. He oversees the delivery of the core Growth Hub contract funded by the Government Department for Business & Trade (DBT), and also the Growth Hub’s discrete programmes such as Made Smarter Yorkshire & Humber, and the recently ended Creative Growth Hull & East Yorkshire Programme. 

Jon also manages relations with the Growth Hub’s key partners which include the two Hull & East Yorkshire local authorities; trade & industry bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses, For Entrepreneurs Only, and the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce; and other funded business support provision in the region such as the Business Growth Service, DBT International Trade Advisors, the Help to Grow: Management Programme, the British Business Bank and its Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

Jon is a proactive member of the National Growth Hub network, and represents the Growth Hub at meetings of the network in order to work on cross-network initiatives and to share best practice for effective delivery of the Growth Hub service. More recently, Jon has taken the position as HEYCA lead for The Great North: Creative initiative and the newly launched Yorkshire Regional Defence & Security Cluster. Jon also coordinates the Growth Hub's business and economic intelligence reporting which is reported into government via DBT on a monthly basis and is informed by a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data sources. 

Jon has worked in regional business support since 2013, and therefore brings to the role an extensive knowledge of the support needs of growth businesses, as well experience in how to deliver relevant and impactful support to SMEs in particular.

People are at the heart of any successful organisation. Employees who are happy at work, motivated and healthy are more productive. Organisations constantly compete for talent. Attracting and maintaining good people is a challenge but being a good place to work and being supportive of your employees goes a long way to securing the commitment of your workforce.

The HEY Workforce website is an extensive library of information, toolkits and materials designed to help you implement good employment practices, support your employees and support your organisation to become as productive as it can be.

HEY Growth Hub also offers workforce development advice and support via its dedicated Workforce Development Business Advisor. This advisor offers free and impartial support across a wide range of workforce related matters, including:

• Apprenticeship recruitment, understanding the apprenticeship levy and levy transfer
• Advice on traineeships, student placements and T-Levels
• Access to funding and training for workforce skills development
• Advice on workforce health and wellbeing
• Support to adopt best practice within workforce development 

Jo Silverwood is a new Business Advisor supporting SMEs across Hull, bringing 25 years’ experience in business development, partnership management, and growth-focused programme delivery across the public and private sectors.

In her previous role, Jo led partnership development for the HEY region’s high-performing Skills Bootcamps programme, helping drive delivery of a £10m government-funded initiative to support workforce development. She built strong relationships with local employers, training partners, and stakeholders, driving engagement with over 200 businesses in priority industry sectors across the Humber and contributing to maintaining the programme’s top national performance ranking.

Jo brings valuable commercial experience from her role as Head of International and People & Culture Lead at a local performance marketing agency, where she supported SME growth, led international expansion projects, secured grant funding and industry awards, and improved employee engagement and brand visibility through multi-channel campaigns and strategic partnerships.

Earlier in her career, as a Hull graduate linguist, Jo spent five years with a global engineering & manufacturing firm, managing international multilingual sales accounts, supporting export operations for worldwide clients, and contributing to award-winning business performance, including recognition through Queen’s Awards and Investors in People.

Jo’s public sector background includes senior roles in education management, and business partnership development, securing and delivering large-scale funded programmes through Erasmus+, the British Council, DFID Global Schools, and Youth Enterprise. She established and grew key employer partnerships through her leadership of a unique Community Learning Trust, improving students’ employability skills, expanding enrichment opportunities, and strengthening business–education engagement.

With a strong understanding of the local business landscape, Jo is passionate about helping SMEs access opportunities, overcome challenges, and achieve sustainable growth.

Before joining HEYCA in April 2026, Andrew Richardson was involved in designing and delivering major regeneration schemes and programmes several rural and urban settings. Andrew also supported numerous local authorities developing action plans and strategies on issues to do with economic development, community engagement, the built environment, and culture or heritage. He also enjoyed project managing Hull’s amazing Whitefriargate High Street Heritage Action Zone funded by Historic England. 

More recently, as the Creative Growth Hull & East Yorkshire Manager he has been project managing the Creative Growth Programme funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. This programme which has now come to an end was delivered by a partnership comprising Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire Councils, Hull University Business School and the HEY Growth Hub and supported 81 creative businesses across the different sectors to look at their potentials for growth. The view from participating businesses is that it has helped them to gain the confidence and skills needed to support their plans moving forward. 

Given that the creative industries have been identified as a ‘Growth Potential Sector’ for Hull & East Yorkshire, HEYCA is now considering how best to support local creative businesses in the region to make the most of any prospects to further grow the local economy. Opportunities might include accessing new funding, securing equity investment or identifying new business markets. 

Whilst part of the Hull & East Yorkshire Business Growth Hub, my role is to engage and support manufacturing businesses across the sub region to explore and implement the adoption of digital technology and solutions within their businesses. This support encompasses the grants and workshop packages delivered through the Yorkshire & Humberside Made Smarter Programme as well as the grant support of Growing Places Funds and the activities of the Hull City Council and East Yorkshire County Council teams.  The role is to seek out the best options and opportunities for the manufacturing business owners and senior staff.  

The role is also able to access specialist one to one advisory support packages for industry specialist to assist the business with innovation, adaption and implementation of Industrial Digital Technology as part of the Made Smarter Programme. This advisory support is able to offer fully funded diagnostic RoadMap to support the business is progressing through its digital journey, where my role is to support the business in implementation via the access of grant support.  This engagement with the manufacturing businesses is achieves via a combination of local networking events, workshop and social events specifically design for the manufacturers. I liaise with external agencies like the University of Hull / Aura Innovation Centre, local representative of Department of Business & Trade, Chamber of Commerce and local specialist training organisations to support the manufacturing businesses.

In summary, if your business is looking for the following, please contact me:

• Guidance or support to aid your manufacturing businesses in exploring new equipment and new software solutions
• Access Grants to support the implementation of new digital solutions for your manufacturing processes 
• Introduction to specialist digital and manufacturing specialist to solve problems in the manufacturing processes
• Offering workshops aimed sufficiently at manufacturing issues and/or demystify new digital solutions (like Additive Manufacturing / 3D, Cyber Security, The Cloud Support and/or digital prototyping)
• Training opportunities in Digital Leadership / Management Development