Enterprise Tuesday – Motivation: The Journey from Zero

Inspirational stories from four female founders

With guest panellists Zoe Peden, tech entrepreneur and VC Investor, FutureWorldVC; Helene Martin-Gee, Founder of Pink Shoe; and Angela Malik-Agarwal, Partner in Think Hospitality and Founder of Planet Nourish

Entrepreneur as a word derives from the French in its masculine form (f: entrepreneuse). This sets the scene for so many of the challenges women entrepreneurs faced and continue to face. The playing field is not even for all! With women only receiving one per cent of all available venture capital (VC) funding in the UK – how can it be?

In this session, we will explore the context in which female entrepreneurs operate including the impact of COVID-19 on women entrepreneurs. As women entrepreneurs and their businesses are predominantly present in the 3Cs (care, catering, and cleaning sectors) as well as retail which are among the hardest hit by the pandemic both from a health and financial perspective. And yet women are not victims! They are creative, resilient, skilled entrepreneurs, creating and scaling great businesses, many of them with a valuable social impact. What are their motivations and how do they stay resilient through the ups and downs? We will also do some myth busting around the youth and unicorn culture dominating entrepreneurship currently – which may also be putting many women off becoming entrepreneurs in the first place!

Chaired by Rebecca Hill, Founder of Wise Sherpa.

Registration: 18:25-18:30
Panel talk: 18:30-20:00
Networking: 20:00-20:30

This event is one of three Enterprise Tuesday events, that focuses on female founders who will recount and share insight on their inspiration, motivation and realisation on their journey.

Ticket booking is essential for the February series. Please note: main registration closes 24 hours prior to the event. The event will take place on Zoom.

Register

Enterprise Tuesday introduces budding entrepreneurs to the world of business, aiming to inspire people to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. The talks are open to everyone but prior registration is essential.

Have a question? Please email the team at enterprisetuesday@jbs.cam.ac.uk.

Find out more about future guest speakers and topics

Speaker bios

Zoe Peden, tech entrepreneur and VC Investor, FutureWorldVC

Zoe is an experienced tech entrepreneur and VC investor for Ananda Impact Ventures with over 20 years’ operating and board experience in technology companies. She co-founded one of the UK’s top special education apps, MyChoicePad and now spends her time looking for Europe’s most impactful tech entrepreneurs to invest in and support to scale. In addition, Zoe sits on an Investment Committee for UnLtd and is also a Visiting Lecturer at Cass Business School. Previous achievements include Elle Magazine UK Female Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Finalist Global Mobile Awards and BAA Female-led investment of the Year.

Helene Martin-Gee, Founder of Pink Shoe

A serial entrepreneur with businesses from technology to healthy snacks, Helene is Founder of award-winning businesswomen’s network Pink Shoe Savvitas, with Patrons The Rt Hon Theresa May MP and Tessa Sanderson CBE. As Parliamentary Adviser on entrepreneurship and international relations, Helene has worked at the centre of UK Government for 20 years; engaging all political parties on government think-tanks for female enterprise and entrepreneurship. Board member of three Parliamentary groups, she established the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship, chairing its Advisory Board. Having initiated the UK Economic Blueprint for Women and national roadshow supported by NatWest, Helene led on its 2020 Government White Paper: Leveraging Opportunity for Female Entrepreneurship. A non-executive director, investor, and media commentator; RSA Fellow; adviser to the Institute for Creative & Cultural Enterprise at Goldsmiths, London; Scale-Up Institute Ambassador, and previously adviser to Innovate UK and Hays. USA non-executive director roles include Quantum Leaps; WishKnish; VeeSee.

Angela Malik-Agarwal, Partner in Think Hospitality and Founder of Planet Nourish

Angela is a qualified CA from KPMG, Imperial College MBA, a top UK chef with classical training from Leith’s School of Food & Wine, a successful broadcaster and food entrepreneur, and an award-winning culinary trainer. Her experience includes bootstrapping restaurant startups, raising institutional investment for concept chains, to advising c-suite contract catering industry leaders. Angela is a partner in Think Hospitality. This collective of hospitality business leaders aims to empower the growth and development of hospitality brands through consulting, investments, joint venture partnerships and events. She is also the founder of Planet Nourish, a new online platform that works with British Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic families to tackle diet-related illness and provides recipes and advice on adapting our cultural eating habits. Angela was the first Indian woman contestant on BBC2’s professional chef competition ‘Great British Menu 2017’, and a founding panellist on Radio 4 ‘The Kitchen Cabinet’.

Rebecca Hill, Founder of Wise Sherpa

Rebecca has a background working for major global professional and financial services organisations including EY where she was a global director specialising in people and organisational change leading major programmes including EY’s award winning global Women. Fast forward programme – an EY flagship programme profiled annually at WEF Davos. She has a strong interest in the economic empowerment of women and is a UK delegate to the Women20 (W20) – an official engagement group of the G20. As founder of her business, Wise Sherpa, she has been named a top Advisor for Leadership and Management by Enterprise Nation. She coaches and mentors female business owners and leaders including on the Deutsche Bank, NatWest and NEF accelerators.