International Women’s Week Conference

Funding Focus is back at the London Stock Exchange!

In celebration of International Women’s Week, Funding Focus will be hosting a half day conference live from the London Stock Exchange on Thursday, 10 March 2022 from 1 pm – 6:30pm GMT. The event will also be streamed live online for our community outside of London.

The conference aims to blaze an enduring path as we work to level the uneven playing field that female and under-represented founders face when it comes to raising capital.

We’re bringing together successful entrepreneurs who have raised funding, enterprising minds, investment gurus and sector experts. All willing to share their experiences, nuggets of wisdom and help raise awareness in the fight for fairer funding.

Over the half-day conference, we will focus on why female and under-represented entrepreneurs face barriers in the investment world, discuss what approaches have worked, and help understand their routes to funding. By connecting and informing individuals, firms and industry bodies, we hope to drive sustained commitment to progress.

We will also be making a BIG announcement, which we know our audience will love!

Join us on 10 March 2022 at London Stock Exchange – register your place now!

Agenda

Registration and Reception

13:00 to 13:30

David B. Horne

Welcome and setting the scene for the afternoon

13:30 to 13:50

LSEG CEO, Julia Hoggett

Keynote address

13:50 to 14:00

Speaker 1: Jane Clarke

14:00 to 14:30

Speaker 2: Olivia James

14:30 to 15:00

Break

Tea, coffee and water available

15:00 to 15:30

Speaker 3: Bente Ottersen

15:30 to 16:00

Panel discussion

Shalini Khemka, Paula Groves, Daina Spedding, Alexandra Daly, Sarah Turner

16:00 to 16:30

Speaker 4: Ishveen Jolly

16:30 to 17:00

Fireside chat and closing

Ayuna Nechaeva, LSEG & David B Horne

17:00 to 17:30

Drinks and networking

17:30 to 18:30

Speakers

Jane Clarke Founder of Nourish by Jane Clarke

Jane is both a dietitian and Cordon Bleu chef with more than 30 years’ experience in the nutrition industry. Jane is the author of nine best-selling books, was a columnist for over a decade for The Daily Mail, Observer, The Times and The Mail on Sunday, and regularly contributes on TV. Jane was the first person in the UK to open a private dietetic clinic, establishing a highly successful specialist Nutrition and Dietetic practice in London that has been running for the past 27 years.

Olivia James Performance Specialist

Olivia James is a Harley Street performance coach and therapist. She treats confidence issues, performance anxiety and trauma. Olivia brings unique perspectives gained from her clinical work with founders on mental health, confidence issues and resilience. She is a speaker and visiting lecturer on entrepreneurship and mental health and has appeared at Regent's University and Bayes Business School (formerly Cass).

Bente Ottersen Founder and CEO of Titles-On Ltd

An inventor and an entrepreneur having founded several successful companies as well as having brought her experience to established companies, Bente has a deep understanding of clients’ industries and global perspective on progressive business ideas and emerging technologies enabling drive and transformational change.

Ishveen Jolly CEO & Founder at OpenSponsorship

Ishveen is a trailblazer in the sports marketing industry having built OpenSponsorship.com into the world's largest marketplace connecting brands to athletes for digital marketing campaigns. Her accolades include getting on the Forbes 30U30 sports list, Inc's top 100 female Founders list and raising over $5M for the company including from NBA team owners, athletes, notable VCs and her Alma Mater Oxford University. The marketplace has 12,000 athletes, 60% are managed by the major sports agencies and 40% is athletes direct. They have done 10,000 deals including for brands like Walmart, Footlocker, ESPN, Fanduel and 100s more.

Investor Panel

Shalini Khemka (Moderator) Founder & CEO of E2Exchange

As Founder & CEO, Shalini began E2E in 2011 to help founders to ‘scale’ and to avoid many of the challenges she had faced during the establishment of her first business. There are other organisations supporting the growth of entrepreneurs, however, by connecting founders, investors, NED’s, mentors and corporates Shalini has developed a unique approach to serve the entrepreneurial community and the UK economy.

Paula Groves CIO and Founding Member of Impact X Capital Partners

Paula Groves is CIO and Founding Member of Impact X Capital Partners, a London-based double bottom line venture capital company founded to invest in underrepresented entrepreneurs in Europe. Paula has decades of private equity and consulting experience working with highly-motivated extraordinary entrepreneurs from diverse communities and is an expert in developing and deploying targeted investment funds.

Daina Spedding Investor at BGF

Daina Spedding is an Investor at BGF and is responsible for finding and completing new investment opportunities, as well as supporting the boards of the investee companies. Daina has led numerous investments at BGF since joining the team in 2019, with a particular focus on the consumer and e-commerce sectors. She is passionate about backing female founders in particular and developing BGF’s ESG investment strategy.

Alexandra Daly CEO & Founder of AA Advisors

Alexandra Daly is Founder and CEO of AA Advisors, an independent placement agent. She has over 20 years’ experience in finance, 17 of which have been spent in the alternatives sector, raising assets in multiple jurisdictions and across capital structures. She founded AA Advisors in 2007 and to date has helped raise over $1 billion for Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Real Estate and Venture Capital firms. Alexandra is also Co-Chair of the HM Treasury-backed Council for Investing in Female Entrepreneurs, a steering committee bringing together leading financial institutions to increase the amount of VC funding going to female-founded businesses.

Sarah Turner CEO & Co-Founder, Angel Academe

Sarah is an entrepreneur, NED and angel investor. In 2014 she co-founded the fast-growing and award-winning angel network, Angel Academe. Their mission is to introduce more women to angel investing and to invest in women founded and co-founded technology startups with high growth potential. Investments include: Provenance, which uses the blockchain to provide supply chain transparency; Raremark which uses AI to help patients with rare diseases make informed choices about treatment; and Fiskl, a fintech for micro-businesses. Sarah is also on the board of the UK Business Angels Association.

Testimonials from 2019 event

“I was very impressed and inspired by this event. Being an entrepreneur from a developing country (El Salvador) and having little to no access to event such as this is hard. But, hearing from women who have gone through tremendous circumstances to reach levels of success beyond my imagination gave me a huge hope for my career as a woman.”

“It was well thought through, organised and carried enough information which was also clear and concise, not at all overwhelming unlike some events where information can be overloaded. This was just right, very professional and thoroughly enjoyable.”

“Brilliant, vibrant informative conference with quality speakers! I received a free book so very happy. I would definitely attend another conference.”