Our story

Co-founders Dawn and Angela have been best friends since they were 11. Liverpudlians born and bred, they grew up in Bootle and Litherland respectively and quickly became the ying to each other’s yang. Always full of drive, attack and ambition, with an optimistic and positive approach to life.  Dawn’s the thinker, creative strategist and slightly bonkers one. Angela is the super friendly, people person who’s all about bringing people together. Dawn’s also big on ripping up the rule book and affecting transformation and Angela thrives on developing business through relationships and joining the dots. Together, they have built International careers and are now wanting to give back and make a difference to creative and digital businesses through their unique and powerful blend of skills and styles.

Working with Dawn and Angela, you will be guaranteed to have a high impact experience – they did consider the tagline “You’ll hear them before you see them”! They have a deep-rooted understanding and appreciation of the ‘real world’ which SMEs inhabit and have a dazzling array of experts that will help them pivot and transform their business.  They will help you, stretch you and support you – and are only in the business of creating true, long term relationships and making a positive and concrete impact to your business growth and your bottom line.  We all have something extraordinary, whether we know it or not and Dawn and Angela will help you unlock it. And, they are big believers in Oscar Wilde’s famous adage – “Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”

Our purpose and our why is simply – we’re all about inspiring and enabling the growth of our world class creative and digital entrepreneurs to help scale the region and propel us onto the International stage.

Get ready for a life less ordinary.

Dawn Paine
Co-Founder

Most recently Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at Creative England, Dawn was responsible for corporate and marketing strategy, as well as strategic business development across commercial and regional partnerships.

Dawn has enjoyed an award winning and successful 20 year career in leadership roles across the creative industries, entertainment, retail and technology sectors. She was Vice President Marketing at Universal Pictures and prior this, UK Marketing Director and Deputy GM at Nintendo UK. Over a 10 year period, she oversaw the transformation of the video game and entertainment landscape in the UK, directly overseeing the record breaking launch of the Wii, Nintendo DS, Brain Training and Wii Fit in what was the most successful period of Nintendo’s 110 year history.

She is an active member of the exclusive female leadership network WACL, the Marketing Society and is a Non Executive Board Member of renowned contemporary dance organisation The Place and the London Contemporary Dance School.

Dawn has recently been voted as a Marketing Week Vision 100 leader, an accolade awarded to marketers seen as visionary in their field.

Angela McClelland
Co-Founder

Most recently Head of Partnerships at Creative England, Angela was responsible for developing corporate, SME, public sector and cultural partnerships across all areas of business. A primary responsibility was the curation of 2 major ERDF creative and digital programmes, Pro Connect – leading teams in Manchester and Herts working with the Manchester Growth Hub and the Hertfordshire LEP respectively.

Angela has enjoyed a successful career in leadership roles, primarily in retail and commercial banking.  She was a Regional Manager for Santander leading a team of over 200 people. Prior to this she worked for HSBC for 10 years as a Regional Commercial manager with her primary focus being to support, nurture and drive SMEs to optimise their performance and increase their profitability. This role enabled Angela to lead the commercial team with their primary aim being to strategically develop those SME leaders to be the ‘best they can be’. Specifically, Angela and her team reviewed and diagnosed their business plans, gave them advice on next steps to grow their business including funding and sales planning. She relocated to Hong Kong during this role, for an overseas placement as International Business Director creating the Global Relationship Management programme.

What others say about us…

Dawn was my leader and mentor for most of my early marketing career. For seven years she helped develop me from an opinionated, somewhat arrogant and probably quite annoying young product manager into a more senior leader who valued collaboration, working together and solving problems above ego and personal gain. She is kind, inspirational and creative – but equally has a fierce drive and entrepreneurial energy that always brings out the best in her team and anyone around her. I learnt so much from Dawn, and have only managed to get to where I am today with her support, talent and faith in me Rob Lowe

Senior Global Director Digital Consumer Entertainment Lego

My journey as founder of Citrus Suite, starting with just myself as a one man limited company, growing to an award winning digital agency with 11 staff has been greatly aided by Dawn Paine. Dawn led initiatives at Creative England that had direct benefits to Citrus, including the opportunity to connect with global markets, and speak at a session at Cannes Lions. Chris Morland

CEO Citrus Suite (Liverpool Creative SME)

I have worked with Dawn for the last 4 years and know her to be an exceptional leader. She has excellent strategic and creative skills. She has the ability to take her team with her, to know when to take risks and to be innovative and inspiring. Most importantly she always has an eye on the bottom line and ensures that she delivers strong ROI. She’s also great fun to work with. Nicola Mendelsohn

CBE VP EMEA Facebook / Chair Creative Industries Council

I have worked with Angela and have found her to be a hard working passionate manager working in the commercial sector. She throws herself fully into her work. Angela inspires her team of relationship managers to deliver, always with a customer centric outcome. She creates and builds great teams that deliver good quality results. She also has a fantastic sense of humour. James August

Partner Development Leader, St.James’ Place

I have worked with Angela for over 10 years and have seen her succeed in a number of roles. She is a high energy, inspirational leader who has also shown that is able to focus on detail/structure and procedures as she has operated in a highly regulated field. It has been a pleasure working alongside Angela and I will miss working with her. Steve Brady

Deputy Area Commercial Director at HSBC

Founding Members