Judges

Rachel is the Editor of Growing Business Intelligence. She is the former Enterprise Editor of The Sunday Times and author of eight books about entrepreneurs, business and personal development, including How to Start a Business without any Money, How to Make a Million before Lunch and How to Work for Yourself.

Mark worked in Private Equity prior to co-founding West Cornwall Pasty Co in 1998. The business twice featured in The Sunday Times Fastrack 100, winning The Sunday Times Emerging Brand award and was sold in 2007 for £30m.

Mark is co-founder of ONE FEEDS TWO, a feeding charity that has provided over 10 million school meals to children in poverty, and has worked with entrepreneurs at The Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg as well as appearing as a panelist in the Sky TV series “Cooks to Market”.
Mark now runs JOOI, a modern sexual lifestyle and wellness site.

Simon Duffy MBE is the founder of leading international skincare brand Bulldog, and the innovative new oral care disruptor, Waken, an innovative new oral care brand. Bulldog launched in 2007 and was acquired by Edgewell Personal Care in 2016. Waken launched in 2019 in the UK and is currently expanding internationally.

Philippa Gogarty is Co Founder and Executive Director of Micro Scooters Ltd, which she founded in 2004 with her business partner. They founded the company whilst living in Clapham, after Anna came across the the mini micro scooter on Clapham common. Instantly the small three wheeled scooter became an integral part of children’s everyday lives and the company grew to include an entire range of scooters and accessories for children as young as 18 months to 80 years. Philippa lives in West Sussex and has an interest in supporting refugees in Northern France. Philippa enjoys walking cycling skiing and travelling.

Darren created Santander’s Growth Capital business nearly 10 years ago following a banking and private equity career supporting high growth SME’s in the UK and Europe. The team facilitates growth projects from strategic acquisitions to R&D and international expansion. Santander Growth Capital is active across a very wide range of sectors and supports entrepreneur founder owner managers as well as institutional equity backed businesses. It is an innovative and flexible form of debt finance designed to help UK businesses grow, without giving away control or significant equity.

Andrew Jennings is a British entrepreneur who founded fashion accessory brand Larsson & Jennings in 2012, and became an investor and board member to British shoe brand Duke & Dexter in 2014.

With over nine years experience in building a brand, both online and offline, Andrew’s expertise spans across all the core business functions of a modern fashion, retail and consumer business.

Specialist Private Equity Investor helping SME’ s grow and create value under challenging and complex situations including stressed businesses. Works closely with Investee Management teams and partners to deliver a commercial and practical approach in getting things done and dealing with the challenges in delivering financial and operational business improvements.

Sector generalist with 20+ years’ experience as an Investor, advisor and banker and with particular expertise in cash management, process/profit improvements and risk management, all of which support value creation strategies.

Sean Longsdale joined Santander in June 2012 to help build out the Structured Finance business in the Corporate & Commercial Bank. The team now incorporates a Financial Sponsors team, who manage Private Equity backed transactions; a Growth Capital team who support high growth SME’s to realise their aspirations with debt capital solutions; a Strategic Debt Solutions team who support businesses with complex and/ or leveraged funding needs such as mergers and acquisitions and a Specialised and Project Finance team, who focus on the renewable energy sector and other niche financing requirements.

Dr Graeme Malcolm is CEO and founder of M Squared, a multi-award-winning photonics and quantum technology company. It’s one of the UK’s most innovative and disruptive technology businesses, well-known for creating the world’s purest light. Graeme is deeply committed to finding technological and entrepreneurial solutions to society’s pressing problems, including improving healthcare, halting climate change and ushering in a new generation of quantum solutions. He’s a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Institute of Physics. In 2015, he was awarded an OBE for his services to Science and Innovation.

As MD of O’Donovan Waste, Jacqueline is one of the waste and construction sectors’ most passionate pioneers of employee-training, industry best-practice and road-safety. Jacqueline is recognised as an innovator and a leading-force in the industry and is a keen advocate of sustainable-operations as well as encouraging diversity and inclusion. She has received numerous accolades for her work and holds several respected fellowships/affiliations with professional organisations/bodies in the sector. She is a recipient of the Growing Business ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ title as well as the Women’s Economic Forum naming her as their Woman of the Decade in Enterprise and Leadership.

Dr Breda O Dwyer: Senior Lecturer and Director of the Richard Cantillon Institute, at Munster Technological University, leading regions through transformation with entrepreneurial sustainable solutions. Breda has co-designed and co-implemented a number of design led entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial programmes including the European winning Design4SMEs commercialization programme for post graduates. She is VP of Education and Practitioner Learning of the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship and co-chair of REntEd Sig Group. Her initiatives target founders, researchers, policy makers, students, and teams within micro to global corporates, aiming to stimulate their entrepreneurial mind-sets towards innovative commercial and other added value solutions.

I have been a civil servant for 22 years. My most recent role at the Department of International Trade (DIT) is London Export Champion Manger. The main purpose of this role is to manage an ambassadorial/ focus group of high exporting SME’s in London. This group is known as the London Export Champions. The main purpose of this group is to Encourage low and potential exporters to export through our marketing campaign and DIT led events. We also used the group for insight into business challenges and barriers that helps shape future policy including Free Trade Agreements.

Rupa Shinh is a successful, well respected and trailblazing multi-award-winning serial entrepreneur, investor, founder CEO, consultant and board advisor. For 17 years, she has invested in and founded a myriad of pioneering and disruptive award-winning global companies. Prestigious accolades include: Management Today’s Inspiring Women, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year Nominee, DigiLeaders 100, Business Elite’s 40 under 40 & Successful Women In Business.

John Treharne is a former accountant and England squash player who’s experience in the fitness industry spans 29 years.

In 1991 John started his first gym business, Dragons Health Clubs, which listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1997, with 22 clubs. Dragons was sold in 2000. He then lent his expertise to premium gym chain Esporta, before he concentrated on the launch of The Gym Group in 2008.
Under John’s leadership, The Gym Group pioneered the low cost gym model with contractless, 24/7 operations and online sign-up. In November 2015, The Gym Group became the first UK health and fitness group to debut on the London Stock Exchange in over 15 years. In February 2016 the business was named as a finalist and Ruban d’Honneur recipient in the 2015/16 European Business awards. John stepped down as CEO of The Gym Group in September 2018, but remains on the board as Founder Director.
Today, The Gym Group is nationwide with over 170 sites and a roll-out programme of 15-20 new gyms each year. It has had over 100 million gym visits since launch in 2008 and over 15 million gym visits in 2018, and has a membership of over 800,000, which would fit into Wembley, Twickenham, the Bernabeu, the MCG, Old Trafford, Croke Park and the Nou Camp combined.

Henry leads Beauhurst’s Research & Consultancy team. He is an expert on business finance and has worked on briefs for clients including the British Business Bank, HM Treasury, BEIS and Innovate UK. Henry regularly gives presentations on market trends at events around the country. He studied Classics at the University of Oxford.