The Lifted Women Angels Conference, taking place in Harrogate at The Old Swan Hotel on 26th September aims to bring together women leaders and women professionals from all industries and sectors. The audience will include active angel investors and those looking to find out more.
In this special conference we will be inspiring and empowering more women to become Angel Investors and invest in women led start-up businesses in the North.
The conference is being set up by Lifted Ventures, in partnership with RBC Brewin Dolphin, The British Business Bank and supported by UKBAA and the Women Backing Women Campaign with some support from The Old Swan. The conference will outline and share experience of the opportunities to invest in early-stage companies in the North, highlighting the business benefits to backing female founders.
Check out our full agenda for the Women Angels Conference here:
9.20am – Sign-in & Networking
10.00am – Welcome from Jordan Dargue and Helen Oldham – Lifted Ventures
10.10am – Keynote – Jenny Tooth from UK Business Angels Association
10.35am – Keynote – RBC Brewin Dolphin
10.45am – British Business Bank: Female founders and the early stage investment ecosystem – Angelene Woodland – The British Business Bank
11.00am – We Need You! Rallying support from industry and sector professionals, the role and impact of women backing women
- Sarah Ellerby – Nova Pangaea
- Natalie Boswell – Lloyds Bank
- Zandra Moore – Panintelligence
- Henrietta Boyd – Halocycle
- Amy Pierechod – Gordons LLP
11.45am – The important role of allies in the angel investment ecosystem
- Mark Roberts – Red Line Foundry
- Felix Kumi-Ampofo – West Yorkshire Combined Authority
- Ammar Mirza CBE – Asian Business Connexions
- Phil Fraser – Leeds Business Podcast
12.30pm – Lunch
1.00pm – Founder Showcases: five lightning pitches from female innovators and their journey’s
- Henrietta Boyd – Halocycle
- Carrie Ambler – LightOx
- Jodie Hill – Thrive Law
- Elaine Galston – Bettipod
- Kate Hawker – Adventuro
1.30pm – Building effective and collaborative investor eco-systems to support female founders, from angel investing to venture capital and beyond
- Jenny Tooth (Chair) – UK Business Angels Association
- Tavia Sparks – Foresight Group
- Dama Samathianathan – Bethnal Green Ventures
- Sandy Reid – Mercia
2.10pm – My journey to becoming a successful investor
- Morag Dennett – Childrens Author
- Suzanne Donovan – Marketing & Communications
2.30pm – Investing for personal growth and wealth
- Chris Black – Brewin Dolphin
- Anny Lian – Fat Green Wealth
- Helen Chamberlain – Benenden Health
3.10pm – Closing remarks followed by networking and drinks
You can learn more about our fantastic speakers below.
Co-founder
Lifted Ventures
Change maker, community builder, up leveller, female entrepreneur champion, explorer.
Helping to shape ambitious growth strategies and deliver them through simple actionable steps.
Co-founder
Lifted Ventures
Jordan Dargue, is a founder, senior executive, investor, NED and seasoned investment expert. Her boundless passion for innovation, coupled with a remarkable track record of achievements, positions her within the realms of growth and investment.
Executive Chair
UKBAA
Jenny Tooth OBE is Executive Chair of UK Business Angels Association UKBAA, the trade body for angel and early-stage investment in the UK that she established in 2012 where she was CEO until 2020, supporting and building the angel and early-stage ecosystem across the UK. Jenny has been an Angel investor for over 15 years and brings over 30 years’ experience of supporting businesses to access investment. She is passionate about diversity and increasing investment in women entrepreneurs and established the Women Backing Women campaign in 2022 and is a member of the Government’s new Invest in Women Task Force. She is also Vice President for Diversity and gender focused investment for Business Angels Europe.
Portfolio Manager
RBC Brewin Dolphin
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Chief Customer Officer
British Business Bank
Angelene Woodland is the Chief Customer Officer at the British Business Bank, having joined in April 2019.
She is responsible for creating and delivering the Bank’s market engagement strategy and is responsible for Brand Marketing, Communications, Digital & Direct Marketing, Sustainability, Partnership Marketing, Public Affairs, and the regionally based UK Network team.
Chief Executive Officer
Nova Pangaea Technologies
Sarah has over 20 years’ international experience from micro-cap, scale-up, to Forbes Global 2000 companies. She has held CEO roles across energy, natural resources, construction and manufacturing sectors in North America. She was an associate partner at Hanson Family Holdings (formerly Hanson Plc) for over 12 years and has a track record of creating exponential growth and transformation within high growth and turnaround situations. Sarah has expertise in successfully leading exit strategies more than >5X multiple.
Regional Development Director
Lloyds Banking Group
Natalie Boswell leads on Regional Development for the North East & Yorkshire for Lloyds Bank, with the objective of building stronger and more sustainable regional economies through collaboration and thought leadership. Natalie is passionate about supporting women founded and led businesses and focus areas of her regional development strategy include supporting businesses with productivity, international trade, access to finance and net zero transition.
Natalie joined Lloyds Bank after graduating from Leeds University and has spent 11 years in customer-facing relationship management roles, supporting businesses across various sectors deliver their strategies and growth ambitions.
Chief Executive Officer
Panintelligence
Zandra Moore is the Co-founder and CEO of Panintelligence and is a tech entrepreneur, specialising in data. Zandra is passionate about enabling more women in the tech industry, improving gender equality and increasing investment in businesses founded by fellow female entrepreneurs. Earlier roles in tech instilled an appreciation of the technology industry and a desire to make a change in the mostly male led sector.
Co-founder and Director
Halocycle
Henrietta has worked in both finance and the environmental sectors. Following a degree in biology, and a PhD in Ecology from Cambridge University, she moved into the financial sector, where she worked for European Credit Management (at the time, the fastest growing fund manager in the world, where AUM grew to £20billion) in portfolio analytics and credit research. Henrietta then moved to Permian Global where she held the position of Director of Science/Head of Research for 6 years – running the research and project monitoring teams; coordinating the development of a new carbon accounting methodology under the Verified Carbon Standard; and developing the world’s largest forest carbon project.
Founder and Chair
Asian Business Connexions
A multi-award-winning enterprise and innovation expert who has helped establish and scale several thousand businesses globally through the design, development and delivery of world leading accelerator and scale up programmes. With a portfolio of interests spanning across numerous sectors including property, edtech, health-tech and investment support Ammar is recognised as a leading authority on organisational growth.
With various roles across the public, private and third sectors Ammar has made a consistent and demonstrable impact, being considered the most influential Asian in the North East of England, connected globally with community, business and government leaders.
Founder and Host
Leeds Business Podcast
Phil went from an accidental kitchen table start up, with no investment, all the way to multi-million pound sale to a PLC 18 years later. He’s travelled the full SME business journey. Phil now works with ambitious SME-owners as a Business Sounding Board (think somewhere between Business Coach and Business Mentor). In simple terms, he’s ‘a pair of ears and an extra pair eyes’ for SME Owners helping them get clarity.
Chief Scientific Officer
LightOx
Carrie is passionate about fuelling growth and seeing how ideas can evolve into innovative advancements and have been able to explore this, stepping into the corporate world through LightOx, a spin-off biotech company from Durham, York and Oxford universities, rising to Chief Scientific Officer and Interim CEO.
Partner
Gordons LLP
Amy is a partner at Gordons, a Yorkshire based commercial law firm. She specialises in investment in high growth businesses, advising both companies and investors. Some of Amy’s clients include online wellness brand Spacegoods, Zoopla and Fuel Ventures.
Director of Inclusive Economy, Skills and Culture
West Yorkshire Combined Authority
Felix has over 20 years of experience and expertise in policy and strategy development, economic analysis, action research, impact assessment, evaluation, business case development and review, and programme appraisal. Prior to his current role at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Felix’s career had spanned both the public and private sectors including academia, local government, regional development, and international consultancy. He has worked for South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Mott MacDonald, Leeds City Council, Yorkshire Forward and Leeds Beckett University. He leads a team which is responsible for developing policies, strategies and partnerships that drive investment, nurtures innovation, and enables West Yorkshire’s circa 2.5m residents and 100k businesses to reach their full potential and create a thriving economy that works for all.
Chief Executive Officer
Red Line Foundry
Mark is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and board advisor. He is an experienced Board Chair, with executive specialisms in brand building, digital marketing, e-commerce, and innovation.
Managing Partner
Thrive Law
Jodie Hill is a neurodivergent solicitor, ED&I consultant, training provider, author, and campaigner, who is passionate about employment law, mental health and wellbeing, equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) and neurodiversity. Jodie qualified as a barrister and was called to the bar in 2010 and later cross-qualified to become a solicitor in 2013. Her mental breakdown in 2017, which she now calls her "mental breakthrough," Jodie founded Thrive Law in 2018, the first UK law firm with wellbeing and mental health at its core.
Founder and CEO
Bettii Pod
Elaine Galston has been involved in all sides of the startup sector for over 20 years. She was Chief Operating and Chief Executive Officer within two start-up engineering companies, both being private equity owned, growing one from base technology to a £16m turnover in 5 years with a trade exit in 2016.
Founder and COO
Adventuro
Kate Hawker is Co-Founder and COO of adventuro, the UK’s go-to platform for adventure sports courses, guiding and equipment rental. Kate and her team raised an angel round in May 2024, which was led by Lifted Ventures. Kate is always open to meeting new angels and advisors who might be looking to join forces!
Investment Director
Foresight Group
Tavia Sparks is an Investment Director at Foresignt, a market leading and long standing UK Investor into SME’s. Foresight invest in growing companies across all sectors. Tavia has worked across private equity, banking and growth capital for 21 years in Edinburgh, London and Yorkshire.
Partner
Bethnal Green Ventures
Dama Sathianathan (she/her) is a senior partner and Head of Origination at Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV), Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC. BGV backs ambitious founders using tech to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges at scale. At BGV, she leads on deal flow, community, and networks, driving BGV’s efforts to act with integrity on diversity, equity, and inclusion and fuel the broader tech for good movement across the UK.
Fund Principal
Mercia Ventures
Sandy has been with Mercia since 2017 and has broad investment experience across sectors, stages and geographies. This includes all aspects of investment including origination, execution and value creation and she particularly enjoys working with management teams and boards to support them on their journey to exit. As Fund Principal for the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II for the East and South East Midlands she is responsible for delivery and performance across the East Midlands, managing the team from our Nottingham office. She also has a broader role across Mercia Ventures including as a member of Investment Committee.
Angel investor
Morag has recently started angel investing alongside her ongoing property business and publishing interests. She originally trained as an accountant and worked in the media and finance sectors before taking the leap into running her own catering business, operating juice and soup bars. She then became somewhat of a serial entrepreneur with a portfolio including online selling, authoring children’s books and property development. She was in the first cohort of the Lifted Ventures training programme and joined us as an angel investor in May 2024.
Angel investor
Suzanne is a founder member of Lifted Angels, and has been angel investing for about 3 years. This followed 30 years in global marketing & communications roles for a US industrial conglomerate and a couple of years consulting for a US private equity firm and their acquisitions. Her main focus today is serving as Vice Chair of the Manchester landmark Victoria Baths, a grade 2* listed heritage events venue. She also does some freelancing on branding strategy and design.
Divisional Director
RBC Brewin Dolphin
Chris is the Head of Financial Planning at RBC Brewin Dolphin In Newcastle. RBC Brewin Dolphin are one of the UK’s leading wealth managers founded in 1762 with over 30 offices across the UK including Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds. Alongside his leadership role Chris is responsible for the complex wealth planning matters of private individuals and their families from all walks of life. He has specialist expertise in helping guide entrepreneurs through their business journey, as well as an exit or other value realisation event. These relationships generally begin at an early stage of an entrepreneur’s career, helping with cashflow management, financial modelling and succession planning. Many clients become active angel investors or support the next generation of ambitious founders with non-financial resources. Chris strives to make entrepreneurship more accessible to women by connecting founders to mentors and networks.
Founder and Director
Fatgreen Wealth
Anny focuses on providing holistic financial advice to business owners, especially women in business. Before qualifying as an IFA, Anny spent over two decades as an investment banker advising businesses from all stages in fund raising, financial restructuring and mergers and acquisitions. Anny is passionate about supporting female founders.
Investor and CFO
A key contributor to and driver of strategic change and delivery, Helen tackles business challenges and create plans that build financial resilience and sustainability. She works very closely with the CEO and top team to advise, act as a sounding board and help solve problems. Most of her time is spent on ad hoc and strategic projects that really elevate the business and create value. Helen is very experienced in a wide range of activities including investment portfolio management, business development, pensions, risk exposure and governance, and she shares this knowledge to help the board reach decisions.
Don’t miss your opportunity to hear from these wonderful speakers and learn more about angel investing from those that have been there. Get your tickets to The Lifted Women Angels Conference below.