“When I was starting out, so many people just laughed at me” –Saeeda Ahmed

Name: Saeeda Ahmed
Age: 30
Business: Trescom
Role: Co-founder/head of diversity and social enterprise
Where: Bradford

When the scheme came to an end, Saeeda struggled to cope with the amount of freelance work coming her way, so she set up Trescom with two other researchers.

Now, the research consultancy is working on the social, civic and economic development and participation of people from deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds.

They provide equality and diversity services to public, private and the third sector and undertake research, training and consultancy on diversity and equality issues. Their clients include the Learning and Skills Council West Yorkshire, the Bradford B-Equal and the Job Centre Plus.

For the Learning and Skills Council, Trescom designed and produced equality and diversity audits for work-based learning providers, focusing on issues such as gender, age group, and ethnic background.

Job Centre Plus in Bradford commissioned them to undertake a project entitled Women Winning Work. Their research looked into the barriers that women, particularly lone mothers or those from minority ethnic communities face when accessing employment.

The company developed a training programme tackling the key barriers and supported the women into getting back to work.

Saeeda tells us how she got into social enterprise and why she thinks people should be concerned with their social footprint

www.trescomresearch.co.uk