Mentors
Expert advice from our network of experienced business professionals, to help build your business
Advise, connect and encourage
Mentors from a wide range of professional backgrounds play a key role in supporting our programmes and provide workshop sessions, 1-1 mentoring and panel discussions. They work with ventures to advise, connect and encourage ideas using their expertise and knowledge.
Want to join our team of mentors?
If you have specialist skills or expertise and you would like to offer support to start-ups, then please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!
Tamsin Eastwood
Tamsin has 25 years’ experience advising businesses and their owners across a range of sectors, working particularly with SME and OMBs and joined Stone King in 2013. Tamsin has a thorough knowledge of company and business law; corporate finance, banking and financial services law; as well as a good understanding of property, employment and general commercial law.
Shai Vyakarnam
Dr Shailendra Vyakarnam has been dedicated to enterprise education throughout his career having established entrepreneurship centres at Nottingham Business School, Cambridge Judge Business School and was Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield. He has taught and mentored entrepreneurs in several countries, enabling founders of science and technology businesses to turn their ideas into full business proposals and have the confidence and self-belief to take them forward.
Paul Hughes
Paul has worked for over 30 years with entrepreneurs, start-ups, scaling and multinational businesses around the world. He has worked in a range of industries including health, bioscience, agritech, cleantech, hardware, software and data driven businesses at CXO level and specialises in strategy, funding, value creation, mergers & acquisitions and corporate development. He currently serves as COO of BIOS and is an advisor to a number of the UK’s most exciting impact start-ups.
Helen Rome
Helen is the owner and founder of Elite Events and Consultancy Ltd, and the Operations Director for Green Energy Parks Group. She has extensive experience working across varied industries and is passionate about helping businesses become more efficient, from assisting with business processes, planning events, and managing various projects. A highly strategic and organised professional, Helen is highly adept at building and managing cross-functional teams working on multiple projects and events, and her quality leadership invokes committed professional participation.
Myrto Lalacos
Myrto works at Praetura Ventures as an investment executive where she finds and invests in the best companies in the UK. She previously worked in the acceleration space for over 3 years. As the Director of Accelerate ME, Myrto supported the growth of student-founded start-ups and held the role of partnerships & network manager at L Marks, Europe’s largest corporate accelerator operator, where she supported the growth of 250 alumni start-ups.
Jonathan Jelley MBE JP
Jonathan had a successful career in investment banking holding various executive positions in global financial institutions. In 2012 he was appointed MBE and awarded honorary life membership in 2019. Jonathan was appointed to the Magistracy in 2006 and continues to administer justice in Peterborough. A freeman of the city of London, he also sits on the boards of both the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation and Peterborough Council for voluntary services. He specialises in strategic development, relationship building and negotiation skills.
Shân M Millie
Shân’s focus is in tech-enabled value generation in insurance & financial services. She practices empowering corporate intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs via her consultancy, Bright Blue Hare; and is Innovation & Customer Lead for Delegated Authority specialists, GreenKite. She is a speaker, coach and voice of authority on innovation, AI, ESG, financial inclusion and is an advisor for and sits on boards of multiple Fintech and InsurTech companies.
Stefania Bonà
Stefania is an expert in online fraud and policy abuse, going back to her studies in Cybercrime at the University of Edinburgh. She is a Senior Product Manager with experience in building products with machine learning for fraud detection, disputes resolutions, revenue and traffic forecasting to help companies save revenue lost to fraud and help them scale effectively. She works in Fintech helping businesses scale to IPO, leveraging new technologies.
Emile Locke
Emile has 20+ years of experience in the Pharmaceutical and Consumer Healthcare Industry, holding managerial and senior leadership positions. He has acted in an operational and strategic capacity as a business partner to organisations and focused on creating high-performing teams by acting as coach and mentor to upcoming leaders in the industry. As an alumni of Warwick Business School (UK), he also forms part of the mentorship programme to inspire and encourage other leaders.
Jonathan Wheeler
Jonathan is an experienced and approachable Finance Director and accredited business turnaround professional. He has over 16 years’ experience as a Chartered Accountant in senior finance and consultancy roles and in providing advice to businesses across various sectors in growth, exit planning, refinancing, M&A, crisis management and turnaround and is able to bring clarity to complex financial problems and explain financial issues to management teams in a concise, jargon-free manner.
Andrew Marshall
Andrew is a marketing strategist who is digitally qualified through Google to offer the best advice through the fastest developing form of media. Experienced in media concepts with market leading companies such as Sky, Johnston Press plc, Global and Communicorp UK across print, TV and radio. Andrew is driven by a desire to help businesses blossom through strategic and targeted marketing plans that will get their business in front of their target audience.
Hazel Cottrell
Hazel is the owner and founder of Creative Content Company which she set up in September 2013. The business offers website content, blogging, social media management, social media training and newsletters, as well as other online marketing services. She has worked with many different industries over the years and has a good understanding of various industries and the challenges they face when it comes to online marketing.
Alina Trabattoni
Alina is a financial journalist and television producer with almost 30 years of experience at some of the world’s top news organisations including Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, Platts, BBC, CNBC, CNN, People magazine both in print and broadcast. Alina has a BSc from the London School of Economics and an MPhil from Cambridge University.
Tak Fung
Tak Fung has extensive experience in technical/engineering leadership roles for many years in some of the highest calibre companies. Having exited his own mobile games start-up he moved on to create and lead teams at Zynga and then at Google London and Shanghai. He currently works from Shanghai in EdTech and FashTech spaces and also keeps advisory roles in video game start-ups.
Garry Crosby
Garry is an ActionCOACH business coach based in Peterborough, with a 31 year career in the RAF as experience as leadership. Garry uses the proven business growth system from ActionCOACH to support growing businesses. Whether working on their vision, planning their finances or getting their marketing and sales working well, Garry can help business owners to get where they want to be faster than they could do it on their own.
Tad Ostrowski
Tad is the Founder and MD of Artington Legal and is a senior corporate and commercial lawyer. Formerly an associate at US and UK law firms, and a General Counsel at Travelport (NYSE), he has over 15 years of senior-level experience. Tad’s work focuses on mergers and acquisitions, disposals, fundraisings and joint ventures, preparing companies for IPO, negotiating major commercial contracts and a wide range of commercial law matters with clients from across the globe.
Sophie Dufouleur
Sophie is a brand, digital, and media specialist. She is fascinated by the communications industry and believes the digital revolution is creating endless opportunities for marketers. Her focus is on driving teams through transformation by ensuring strong integrated communication anchored in consumer insights, while assuring synergy between the online and offline world.
Bryan O’Keefe
Bryan is an experienced entrepreneur with an interest in helping early-stage companies fundraise and grow. He received his MBA from Imperial College London where he specialised in innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition to consulting with start-ups, he has founded three start-ups of his own. He also substantial marketing and product knowledge as is customary with experienced early-stage COOs, and is particularly adept at finalising fundraising rounds as well as creating and implementing operational procedures that allow companies to thrive.
Ali Fisher
Ali is a purpose-led brand specialist. Since setting up Plans With Purpose in 2017, she has worked with a range of clients, from Unilever and Coca-Cola to start-ups, charities and community-based organisations, to put sustainability and purpose at the heart of their growth. Her credentials for purpose-led growth were established through 17 years’ experience inside FMCG, growing Unilever brands such as Dove, Persil and Flora. She donates 2% of all project fees to charity through the Work For Good programme.
Anna-Lisa Wesley
Anna-Lisa spent almost 20 years running high profile change programmes with Deloitte and Accenture, before joining Baringa partners as Head of Innovation. In 2018 Anna-Lisa was appointed Entrepreneur in Residence with Startupbootcamp InsurTech accelerator and founded start-up advisory firm Sapphire and Steel with her business partner, Pete Blake. She is in demand as a strategy coach to FTSE 100 and 250 leadership teams and a mentor with Accenture, TechStars, Bethnal Green Ventures and SETsquared Bristol.
Pete Blake
Pete is a technology consultant, brand strategist and design thinker who’s spent 25 years working with founders and senior leadership teams at global brands to support innovation and entrepreneurship. For the past 6 years he has focused on the London start-up ecosystem and in 2018 he set up Sapphire and Steel with his business partner Anna-Lisa Wesley. Pete is a mentor with TechStars, Accenture, Bethnal Green Ventures and SETsquared and a non-exec director with aviation industry startup Blockaviation and social enterprise OneFest.
Naily Makangu
Starting as a Software Engineer at Siemens Industry Software, Naily carved her own path into creating Athena Leaders, a remote-first management and leadership consultancy. Having extensive experience in STEMM, she understands first-hand the leadership challenges faced within the industry. Her quest is to support businesses who are frustrated with not making progress, in need of transforming their existing leaders and looking for new practises to bring their teams together to share in the same mission.
Alessandra Caggiano
Alessandra has considerable experience in managing high profile complex projects and growing start-ups into successful ventures. Head of strategic partnerships at development and investment business This Land™ and previously directing e-Luminate Cambridge, which she founded in 2012, she has also set up two successful companies within the arts and culture sector, held positions in arts development at Cambridge City Council, and held lecturing positions at Anglia Ruskin University.
Kalpesh Baxi
Kalpesh has 22 years’ experience of working for SThree, a FTSE listed global staffing specialist focused on STEM skills and industries. In his last role, he ran a multi-million-pound UK&I business unit and was a member of its board. He has been involved in multiple business ventures and has been fortunate to work with clients from start-ups through to global enterprises across multiple industries. Kalpesh can bring value by supporting on hiring strategies, leadership mentoring, and go to market/customer segmentation.
Charlene Waterworth
Charlene is a fully qualified chartered marketer and has worked within the high-growth, venture-backed technology sector for most of her career. At Silicon Valley Bank she launched their UK branch and developed the brand to become one of the most iconic brands in venture-backed tech. At Ieso Digital Health she supported the management to achieve a successful Series A funding round, while growing both the marketing function and company brand. Charlene now provides consulting services to technology and venture capital businesses in the UK.
Claire Vane
Claire is an HR and search consultant with expertise in European search, resourcing, performance improvement and management, HR operations, process re-engineering, strategy execution and HR transformation through organisation restructuring and coaching. Claire has held executive level senior resourcing posts in blue chip organisations including one of the world’s biggest search firms and one of the top city law firms. Claire is also an experienced coach and has helped many individuals achieve their personal and professional goals.
Narada McKoy
A growth marketing expert with 10 years’ experience in business ranging from Amazon to Adidas and successful start-ups. Narada is the founder of Bravada, the ‘On-Demand marketing agency’ and has worked with startups across a range of verticals including Fintech, Edutech, B2C apps and the non-profit sector, helping them find their first customers and grow sustainably. His areas of expertise include paid marketing strategy and execution, app marketing, customer engagement and data analytics.
Annalisa Roy
Annalisa has been building brands for over 15 years, initially as a graphic designer and then as a strategist. She led content development for Cartier, Braun and Footlocker, launched the first interactive HD live stream on YouTube for BT and lead strategic innovation on Eurostar and Sainsbury’s. She spent 4 years on the board of Abbot Mead Vickers, has led the global strategy on SCA at Publicis, has consulted for Secret Escapes, Tandem Bank, SportPursuit and works with Bartle Bogle Hegarty to lead innovation projects on Samsung Europe.
Katherine Wiid
Katherine has more than 23 years’ experience in recruitment and career management and has a deep understanding of what motivates people at work. As one of just 550 people in the world to have mastered a psycho linguistic conversational tool (the LAB Profile) she works with hiring managers to pinpoint what drives candidates, how they process information and how they make decisions. Trusted and experienced, her profiling, coaching and mentoring is thought-provoking and facilitates awareness and understanding of differences in people in a non-judgmental way.
Esther Jolley
Esther has 20 years’ experience helping brands to extend into new product categories under license and manufacturers take on new brands via license. Brands include P&G (Braun, Max Factor, Febreze, Fairy, Vidal Sassoon), Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Jaguar Land Rover, Harley-Davidson, Kodak, Disney, Warner Bros, Universal and the BBC. Her roles have included oversight of strategic planning, sourcing companies, contract negotiation, product design and development, distribution, sales and marketing, financial analysis and reporting. She also has knowledge of the retail landscape in key markets worldwide.
Heidi Fisher
Heidi is a multi-award winning specialist in social enterprise and social impact. Heidi is listed on the WISE100 (2017) as one of the 100 most influential and inspiring women in social enterprise in the UK, and her CIC is listed on the NatWest SE100 Index 2019. She has worked with over 2,100 social enterprises, ranging from start-ups through to those with over £1 billion of income supporting them to become more sustainable, develop their trading income and to measure and report their impact.
Andrew Hatcher
Andrew has a long history of identifying, developing and managing innovative solutions within corporate environments, and notably created and implemented a comprehensive and international innovation management system while working for Reuters, the European media group. Subsequently working with Reuters Venture Capital, his career at the company culminated with a role as CEO of an Asian-based internet trading corporate spin-out in Singapore which he took through initial VC funding and on to a trade sale. He has created and runs a number of smaller companies since 2004.
Pradeep Debata
Pradeep is MD and Finance Trainer at Accelerate East. He is an ex central banker with a decade of experience in markets and finance leadership at JPMorgan, Nomura and Merrill Lynch. He holds an MPhil and MBA from the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Judge Business School and was awarded fellowships from of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Cambridge Trusts. Pradeep has undertaken strategy and investment consultancy for the SME and high growth innovation space and conducts financial training for executives, entrepreneurs and bankers.
Isabel Napper
Isabel is a lawyer with over 30 years’ experience of advising SMEs and global PLCs in the technology and healthcare/life science areas. An NED on the board of three different tech companies, Isabel has a wide range of board experience in corporate governance and strategic matters as well as operational issues such as HR, business development, budgeting and training. Isabel enjoys working with growing companies on strategy and commercial issues, and is currently a mentor for start-ups on the Pitch@Palace programme.
Preethi Sundaram
Preethi is the Head of B2B Marketing for LinkedIn in EMEA, where she leads the strategy for their technology companies. She also runs her own consultancy through The B2B School where she works with businesses that are scaling, supporting them in their marketing strategy, infrastructure and execution. She’s particularly passionate about educating businesses about how to build a marketing plan and how to do their own marketing.
Pyarali Jamal
Pyarali has 27 years of international experience, 10 years of which was with EY in client-facing M&A and financing transaction advisory positions in Canada, in internal strategy and operations roles in the EY global offices and in the EY UK & Ireland firm. He was a corporate & commercial banker in the early part of his career. Pyarali was CEO and COO of London Re-use Limited, a Non-Executive Director of Big Issue Invest, Chair of The Social Enterprise Loan Fund, and a Member of the Aga Khan Economic Planning Board for the UK.
Ypatios Moysiadis
Ypatios started as a management consultant, specialising in assisting pre-seed and growth phase start-ups and SMEs across different organisations. Since 2006, he expanded his scope into the development, construction and operation of renewable energy assets. This work led to posts at major British and international organisations like Galliford Try Group, Grupotec, Foresight Group, BayWa r.e. and Greensolver across several EU countries. Today, Ypatios focuses on sustainability and innovation, mostly in the Greentech and Cleantech spaces.
Kirsten Corrigan
A versatile brand strategist and agency founder, Kirsten knows the highs and lows of starting and running a fast-growing business. With more than a decade leading teams and delivering strategic insight for clients across multiple sectors, she is acutely aware of the challenges that entrepreneurs face and is used to guiding and advising across the entire operational spectrum. A former journalist, she is a skilled communicator and knows how to ask the right questions to bring about ideas and collaboration among teams.
Helena Kim
Dr Helena Kim is an experienced executive coach, an interpersonal dynamics expert, and a Cognitive Behavioural specialist, who is currently writing a book on challenging conventional wisdom in leadership skills training. Her clients include CEO’s, senior executives and leaders from UBS, The National Gallery, Anson, Horta, Hays, NHS, Undo and the University of Cambridge in the UK; Baxter in Belgium, and the US Air Force. She also trains post-graduates at the University of Cambridge in interpersonal dynamics in groups.
Jelena Aleksic
Jelena is a geneticist turned entrepreneur, passionate about the potential of biotechnology to improve patients’ lives. She is the CBO and co-founder of PharmEnable, a drug discovery company developing the next generation of small molecule drugs for challenging disease areas. The former CEO and co-founder of GeneAdviser, an online ordering platform for genomic medicine now owned by the UK NHS. She co-founded GeneAdviser, is a trustee of the charity TReND in Africa, and is director of a life sciences consultancy, SparkBio Ltd.
Elena Carpenter
With over 25 years’ experience in training, coaching, process improvement, support and operational management, Elena’s career has taken her to Lloyds, The University of Cambridge and a number of national and local charities. Most recently at non-profit impact consultancy New Philanthropy Capital, where she led the organisation through key operational changes including financial management systems and process improvements. Elena’s experience allows her to focus on both systems and behaviour change, getting to the nexus of people, process and culture – the three areas crucial for effective change management.
Liam Eves
Liam is an experienced entrepreneur and executive specialising in growing SMEs in the Life Sciences and MedTech sectors with a track record of business growth in both private and public companies. He is experienced in all stages of the business cycle from start-ups to corporate, strategy, business planning, operational implementation, business development, M&A, flotation (IPO) and fundraising (£100m+).
Steven Kear
Specialising in embedded systems and electronic product development, Steven has over 15+ years’ experience working in the electronics and technology industries with a range of clients (from fledgling start-ups to multinational corporations, higher education institutions and government) – helping them to harness technology, drive innovation and ultimately bring a product to market. Currently, he is Founder of Kear Technology Solutions, a Digital Business Advisor to Nottingham Trent University’s Business School, a visiting Consultant to AND Technology Research and Initiator of The Things Network.
Sam Dods
Sam has over 20 years’ experience in starting, growing, selling, operating in and integrating companies ranging from a small start-up to a Euronext Amsterdam €2+ Billion multinational. Former Technical Director, Managing Director and Head of Organisational Development, Sam is a values driven leader who has lived and worked on 4 continents and developed a profound awareness of the importance of psychodynamics in today’s workplace.
Nathaniel Jowitt
Nathaniel specialises in growth strategy and innovation and has worked as an advisor to start-ups, public bodies and FTSE 100 corporations. His work with high-growth tech ventures includes designing accelerator programmes, supporting founders to scale internationally and pioneering the development of the tech for good ecosystem. Nathaniel co-founded Axle International in 2019, an award-winning risk and innovation advisory firm. He holds a master’s degree in Astrophysics, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics from the University of Oxford.
Mitali Chopra
Having worked for many years in leadership roles at Microsoft, GE and GoDaddy, Mitali now helps business leaders to scale profitably and run efficiently. She has led businesses to scale teams from 12 to 460 team members and has rich experience in business strategy & planning, operational excellence, HR, finance, IT, and sales & marketing of multi-million businesses.
Adam Greenwood-Byrne
Adam is CEO at Cambridge remote access SaaS business, RealVNC. Responsible for seamlessly transitioning from a perpetual software product to a subscription service model, as well as single-handedly building an OEM license revenue stream, Adam’s combination of deep technical knowledge and business acumen is driving significant value, with MRR growth over 50% in 2018. With a background in Mathematics & Computation, and a career spent growing tech companies from the ground up, Adam brings both business and product development skills.
