Greg Ward

Greg Ward is Head of Economic Development at the City of Edinburgh Council. In this post, he is responsible for inward investment, a number of economic participation programmes, tourism, business support and physical development support.

Previously, Greg was Director of Global Markets for the South East Economic Development Agency (SEEaDA) and was accountable for supporting innovative and high growth companies and South East Inward Investment.

In 2001, Greg started SEEDA’s award winning incubation programme – Enterprise Hubs – the largest incubation network under one brand in Europe. This incubation network specialises in the development of and the commercialisation of new ideas and the development of entrepreneurs. The network assists over 2500 high growth, technology start ups at any one time. Since 2005, the Enterprise Hub Network has assisted companies to raise over £60 million in early stage finance. Greg’s team also had overall responsibility for SEEDA’s development of seven key South East sectors.

The first eight years of Greg’s career were in media, mainly in the Middle East. He was involved in several areas of media activity from the delivery of news services, radio and television programmes to the production of periodicals. Greg, himself, produced and presented MoneyLine, a weekly radio programme focusing on finance and investment for the Arabian Gulf area. In 1988 Greg relocated to North America, working on media related activities in Canada including the CANADA 125 campaign which was the PR vehicle for the national celebrations of Canada’s 125th anniversary and led on “Parks 125” an environmental campaign which set up 125 new urban parks across Canada.

Greg has always remained interested in the needs of small businesses however. In 1993, he returned to the UK and has spent the last 15 years working in the area of economic regeneration at town, county and regional level. He has a particular interest in the development of entrepreneurs, small businesses and small business clusters. He is a director of the National UK Business Incubation Organisation.

Greg graduated with distinction from McGill University, Montreal, in Canada, where he read economics and communications.