BT Business Essence of the Entrepreneur 2008: the judges

BT Business is searching for the UK's 20 most inspiring entrepreneurs in its Essence of the Entrepreneur 2008 competition. Now in its third year, the competition is set to celebrate the nation's finest small business owners who are using technology to help their business to succeed. Enter now for the chance to compete for the £20,000 business grant grand prize. Find out more about the people judging the competition

Peter Jones

A proven businessman and star of the BBC's Dragons' Den, Peter Jones is now looking for inspiring entrepreneurs that are making a difference. "It takes a lot of guts to take the plunge and start your own business and I want to see that passion and dedication in the entries. However, I am also looking for a business that is doing something different and unique and has a long term plan for success" said Peter.

Peter Jones' entrepreneurial journey started early when, at the age of 16, he founded a tennis academy. He then set up a computer business and had various other business interests.

At the age of 28, Peter joined corporate giant Siemens Nixdorf and ran its computer business in the UK. In 1998 he founded Phones International Group, a telecommunications firm that now generates revenues in excess of £200m. His business interests range from telecoms, leisure, publishing as well as TV and media. Peter has won many national awards, including Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year in 2001. Now in his early forties, Peter is considered to be one of the UK's leading entrepreneurs.

John Dunsmure

Joining the judging panel for the third year running is John Dunsmure, the managing director of the British Chamber of Commerce Enterprises, the commercial arm of the BCC.

The BCC is the UK's largest business membership organisation representing and providing services to over 135,000 SME businesses across a network of 56 accredited Chambers. Much of John's work centres on bringing services to the business community that encourage international trade, greater skills development, innovation and best practice. He also heads the BCC's direct outreach to commercial organisations interested in working in partnership with the BCC to the benefit of its members.

Mick Hegarty

Mick Hegarty is marketing director at BT Business, where he is responsible for delivering solutions that enable BT Business customers to harness the power of broadband and thrive in the digital networked economy. Being a part of BT's channel for UK medium and small businesses he has first-hand experience of the opportunities and challenges created by the convergence of voice, data and IT.

Mick's career spans 20 years working with telecoms at BT, and he has experience in management roles in IT, customer service, operations and marketing roles. During this time he has had service responsibility for a number of key regional customers, along with product and solution roles that have included enterprise voice, data and IT hardware and Intelligent Network services, in addition to traditional public and private network services.

Adam Shaw

Adam Shaw is an award winning financial reporter and presenter. He won the Plain English Campaign award for Broadcaster of the year for his work in debunking the language used by business and finance. For two years running he was Proshare personality of the year for his work in reporting on the world of shares and investments. He is one
of the best known financial faces on television and currently presents BBC 2's Working Lunch programme. He has also presented BBC 1's Business Breakfast, Radio 5's wake Up To Money and Radio 4's Financial World Tonight. Before that he worked as a business reported for BSkyB and travelled extensively in Eastern Europe reporting on the growth of business there.