Business News
Businesswoman, entrepreneur, comedienne, devotee of ballroom and Latin dancing and would-be helicopter pilot. That’s the eclectic mix that is Deb Leary OBE, who will become the third female president of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce in 2022. Jon Griffin, Chamberlink’s award-winning columnist, discovers the Eureka moment that turned the self-styled ‘funny bird’ into a serious player in the world of forensics.
hen the time comes round for Deb Leary to step up to become Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce’s third female president, the West Midlands business world
The Griffin Report W
could be in for a shock. Deb (she prefers Deb to Deborah) is, by her own admission, ‘a funny
bird’. Not as in odd or peculiar, but as a lover and exponent of humour. The businesswoman, entrepreneur, devotee of ballroom and Latin dancing, would-be helicopter pilot, is – when her busy schedule allows it – also a stand-up comedian. Founder and chief executive of Birmingham innovators Forensic
Pathways, Deb is a member of Funny Women, a self-styled female comedy community which aims to help women find their voice in business with the aid of humour. “I do not tell jokes, it’s observational stuff. I use humour to deflect
situations. You have to learn to laugh at yourself – if you don’t, somebody else will. You can use humour to get you through lots of situations, it makes you appear more human. I bring comedy into everything I do You can’t leave humour behind, otherwise we would all die of boredom. I have been compared to Julie Walters – I can be quite cutting sometimes.” Deborah may indeed be a self-confessed ‘funny bird’ but she has
several other strings to her humorous bow. She won the British Female Inventor of the Year title in 2005 for her work on the world’s first transparent anti-contamination crime scene ‘Stepping Plate’ – a device which has proved a game-changer for her Forensics Pathways company. She was awarded an OBE in 2008 in recognition of her commitment
to entrepreneurship and she won the Inspiring Leader 2015 award at the Forward Ladies National Women in Business Awards finals. And her other roles include Export Champion for the Department for International Trade and advisory board member of the social sciences department at Birmingham City University. In 2022-23 she will become only the third female president at the Chamber of Commerce, following previous incumbents Bridget Blow and Christine Braddock. But her path to the summit of Midland business is clearly rooted in her ability to carve out her own personal winning formula rather than sharp-elbow her way to the top, alpha- male style. Raised in Small Heath to a sales director father and auxiliary nurse
mother, Deb’s business origins were in the secretarial/PA world. She trained as a PA at Solihull College, initially working for a solicitor and the Independent Broadcasting Authority before launching her own secretarial operation from home. “It was remote working. I was taking in work from the local
authority who didn’t require a full-time secretary, but needed PA work. Then I decided to get something more permanent because the kids were older and going to school – I went to work at Fairfax School in Sutton Coldfield as office manager.” Deb’s Eureka moment came when she invented a transparent
‘Stacking Plate’ device to better facilitate investigation work by police at crime scenes, a vast improvement on the previous heavy, non-transparent version favoured by forces. “I just knew it was a good idea. The Plate I was doing was
lighter, stackable, you could see through it. I managed to get a loan from NatWest Bank and to buy tooling from China. I got an office in Tamworth in 2003. “The biggest benefit is transparency. The investigator has to
put the story together – if you can’t see what happened, you can’t recreate the story.
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