35 women under 35
35
women under
35
Don’t
holD
us back
Catherine Thomas
Lauren Currie
Noelle Chen
Success did not come easily to some of this year’s crop of
winners, who needed bucketloads of determination and selfconfidence to fight their way to the top. By KATE BASSETT,
with additional research by Emma De Vita and Elizabeth Anderson
‘I
don’t care what you think. I only care what your boss thinks.’
Noelle Chen was sitting in a meeting in Beijing with 40 other
people, negotiating the sale of a mining company, when the insult
was hurled at her from across the table. The offender had assumed
that 28-year-old Chen was an analyst. Actually, as the youngest manager
on Rio Tinto’s global business development M&A team, she had coordinated the entire deal. She was the boss.
‘It was a red rag to a bull,’ says Chen, originally from Singapore. ‘I
stopped the entire meeting, explained my role and made her [yes, that
scathing remark came from another woman] apologise.’
It was a move that took self-assurance, confidence and guts – qualities
that this year’s 35 Women Under 35 have in spades. Whether they’re
working in fashion or funerals, tunnelling or technology, banking or
beer, this talented and fiercely ambitious group of women know their
worth and refuse to be tied down by other people’s prejudices.
Take Catherine Thomas. She decided she wanted to become a lawyer
at the age of 10, after taking part in a school debate. By 17, she was considering applying to Oxford University. Her teachers laughed in her
face. ‘They told me it was a stupid idea and a waste of an application. I
went to a state school in Wales and apparently “people like me” didn’t go
to Oxford,’ she says. ‘My A-level teacher mocked me relentlessly in front
of the entire class and said I would embarrass myself. In truth, their reaction was a gift. I knew I had to prove them wrong.’
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Thomas did get into Oxford and she now holds an MA in jurisprudence. She was made partner of a family-law firm by the age of 26 and is
now a senior director at Vardags. She’s widely regarded as one of the top
divorce lawyers in the country.
Fran Millar, one of the founding members of Team Sky – the British
pro cycling team that won the past two Tour de France races with Sir
Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome – describes herself as ‘fearless’.
‘When I used to tell people I worked in cycling, they assumed I meant in
a bike shop,’ she says. ‘This industry is an old boys’ network but that has
never bothered me. I just assume people will judge me on my work, not
on my age or sex.’
Smruti Sriram, CEO of eco-packaging firm Supreme Creations,
shares that sassy attitude. ‘I remember meeting Tesco’s head buyer when
I was 24 and pulling off a £1m-plus deal,’ she says. ‘If there’s discrimination, I’ve chosen not to feel it.’
Sriram and Chen both point to their mothers as strong female role
models. Chen’s father had a stroke when he was 35, so her mum became
the main breadwinner: ‘I grew up thinking, if she can do it, so can I.’
Lauren Currie’s high-school mission was to become the next James
Dyson. Graduating from the University of Dundee with a master’s in
design, she realised that the same principles that led to the creation of
Dyson’s market-beating vacuum cleaner could be applied to the services
sector – so she started up her own agency, Snook, aged 23. The Scottish
Fran Millar
Smruti Sriram
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35 women under 35
business owner – one of 14 entrepreneurs on this year’s list – says that she
too has her mother to thank: ‘She taught me from a very young age how
to look people in the eye, walk with purpose and stand up for myself. It's
easy to be confident when everything is going well. The hard bit is finding it again and holding on to it when things get tough.’
And things do get tough. With success comes sacrifice, and all of our
cover stars admit that their personal lives have suffered. Chen works 18
to 20 hours a day (plus weekends) when she’s heading a project. Thomas
says her social life falls by the wayside when she’s on a case: ‘My family
won’t hear from me and my husband will get little more than a sentence
out of me in a week.’
How would kids fit into that picture? Could these women continue
their confident march with children hanging off their hips?
❝
I just assumE pEoplE wIll
juDgE mE on my work, not
on my agE or sEx
Millar says she doesn’t want kids. ‘I’m in huge awe of my friends who
have children but it’s not for me. I’m very ambitious and I like my freedom. As I’ve got older and my salary has gone up, the idea of having kids
has become even less appealing.’
But it is possible to ‘have it all’, as this year’s list shows. Just look at
Eugenie Teasley, who started youth charity Spark+Mettle shortly after
having a baby. Or our ‘One to Watch’ mother-of-five Erika Brodnock,
whose technology business Karisma Kidz, which uses toys and digital
games to teach social and emotional skills, is set to shake up the world of
children’s entertainment.
Drawn from all walks of business life, these are the women
leading Britain out of the economic doldrums and towards growth.
Onwards, ladies.
anna bastEk, 34
EmIly bEnDEll, 33
alIcE bEntInck, 27
karEn braganza, 33
Polish entrepreneur Bastek cofounded Wales-based translation
firm Wolfestone in 2006. When the
recession hit, Wolfestone bucked
the trend and invested heavily in
marketing. The firm was the sixthfastest-growing business in Wales
last year and now has 30 staff and
8,000 translators. The trilingual
Bastek wants Wolfestone to become
a top-10 language service provider.
Oxford PPE graduate Bendell set
up lingerie firm Bluebella in 2005. It
started as a direct sales company, but
now the brand is stocked by Asos,
Selfridges and Figleaves. Turnover
has grown fivefold in two years
since Bluebella entered the US and
Australia, and Bendell now employs
10 people. Last year, she landed the
licence for Fifty Shades of Grey
lingerie in the UK and Ireland.
Nottingham graduate and
McKinseyite Bentinck encourages
graduates to shun a corporate
career. Entrepreneur First, the tech
startup accelerator she co-founded
in 2011, has helped more than 60
graduates build 20 startups. The
firm’s first cohort of 11 businesses
are valued at more than $50m.
Bentinck also set up Code First:
Girls, a free programming course.
As senior counsel for film studio
Warner Bros Entertainment,
Cambridge graduate Braganza
advises on the digital distribution of
movies and TV series across EMEA.
Warner Bros tops the home video
market share at 18% and counts the
Harry Potter series as one of its
recent successes. Braganza was the
lead lawyer for the launch of a new
Warner Bros website in France.
EmIly brookE, 28
kErrInE bryan, 33
mElIssa burton, 34
natalIE DEsty, 31
A charity cycle ride led Brooke to
tackle bike safety as her final-year
project at Brighton University. Her
invention, a laser light that projects
a fluorescent image of the bike five
metres ahead, raised £25,000 in five
days when it launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter in 2012. The
device is being distributed by
Evans Cycles and next year’s
turnover is predicted to be £2.1m.
Joining CB&I as a graduate, Bryan
became the firm’s youngest
principal engineer. The engineering
graduate from Birmingham worked
on National Grid’s expansion at
Kent’s Isle of Grain in 2009. Bryan is
now lead electrical engineer for the
living quarters of a North Sea
offshore oil platform, with a team of
three engineers, six designers and
a £2m engineering budget.
Burton launched gelatine-free
sweets company Goody Good Stuff
in 2010. Since then, her gummy
treats have been sold in 20,000
outlets including Asda and Virgin
Trains. The firm also exports to 27
countries, helping revenue grow by
160% last year to £1.2m. Burton,
originally from New York and now
based in Lancashire, recently won
UKTI’s Export to Growth prize.
As head of maritime and oil and gas
at engineering recruiter Matchtech,
Desty manages a team of 30 and a
budget of £7m, and was responsible
for placing engineers on the Queen
Elizabeth-class shipbuilding project.
She is determined to promote
maritime engineering to women,
and is a member of a number of
influential marine and naval
engineering institutions.
lInDa EllEtt, 35
robyn Exton, 28
rupa ganatra, 32
sara jonEs, 30
When Ellett was made an equity
partner for tax and pensions at
KPMG in 2012, she became the
youngest of 500 UK partners, the
first female among 21 pensions
partners and the first person in the
firm’s pensions practice to have
gone straight from graduate recruit
to equity partner. A career
highlight was pioneering KPMG’s
£6m mid-market pensions practice.
Dattch is the award-winning lesbian
dating app Exton set up in 2013,
designed to suit women online.
Exton quit her marketing job to start
her business, quickly learning how
to code. She has six staff in the UK
and US, and has launched the
mobile app in the UK and San
Francisco. Exton has won investment
from Telefónica and plans to launch
in north America and Australia.
Former banker turned entrepreneur
Ganatra has her fingers in many
pies: she is co-founder of Yes Sir!, an
online male-grooming-product
business; social media and digital
marketing event organiser Brand Us
Social; and Business of Everything,
an online source of entrepreneurial
expertise. Ganatra also founded and
chairs members’ club Home House’s
Women Entrepreneurs group.
Self-confessed techie Jones is
co-founder (and designer) of HiringHub.com, a recruitment
marketplace with more than 100
clients, including Jaguar Land
Rover, Morrisons and Wonga.
Hiring-Hub turns over more than
£1m and has won many business
awards. Jones was previously a
recruiter on projects such as One
Hyde Park and the Olympic Village.
❞
fran mIllar, 35
Head of winning
behaviours, Team Sky
Millar is one of the founding
members of Team Sky, the
British pro cycling team, which
gave Britain its first Tour de
France win with Bradley
Wiggins. Manchester-based
Millar ran her own athlete
management agency until 2008,
when she was headhunted to
build the UK’s first Tour de
France team. Millar, who didn’t
go to university, is now creating a
development programme for the
team’s 90-strong staff to
maintain Team Sky’s success.
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35 women under 35
bEth kEllIE, 34
camIlla kEmp, 35
kErry-annE lawlor, 34
ErIn lockwooD, 32
As head of mortgage finance at the
recently floated TSB, Kellie reports
directly to the CFO. Leading the
finance design and delivery of
TSB’s mortgage business from
scratch over the past three years,
Kellie is now responsible for £18bn
of mortgage balances and a team of
70. She is also a key member of
TSB’s finance and treasury
leadership team.
As M&C Saatchi’s only female
managing partner, Kemp looks after
270 creatives and four key accounts,
which bring in annual revenues of
£5m. Under her leadership, M&C
Saatchi scooped the digital
creative account for Boots, running
a number of pioneering Facebook
initiatives for the retailer. She also
led M&C’s largest new account
win for 2013 – Blue Cross.
As director of field dynamics in
service delivery at BT, electrical
engineer and MBA Lawlor plans
and operates the production
management of a 20,000-strong
telecoms field force, ensuring
Openreach can forecast, plan and
deliver service to all communication
providers in the UK. She is also an
active promoter for STEM careers to
young women.
The first female managing director
of Silicon Valley Bank’s UK branch,
Lockwood has worked with some of
the country’s largest tech brands,
including Shazam, Mimecast and
Brandwatch. US-born Lockwood,
who moved to London seven years
ago, manages the profit and loss for
the entire commercial banking
division and is responsible for
contracts totalling more than $200m.
sInEaD magIll, 34
poppy marDall, 31
VIcky panayIotou, 34
maDElInE parra, 27
After completing a master’s at the
LSE, Magill joined international
development consultancy Coffey
and moved to Iraq, where she lived
in shipping containers and helped
raise $4m in investment. The mother
of two, who is from Northern Ireland,
is now based in London and works
on projects for countries such as
Afghanistan and Syria. She has
secured contracts worth some £35m.
The founder of Poppy’s Funerals
gave up a career as deputy director
at Sotheby’s to set up her own
business in mid-2012, which aims to
give funerals a more personal touch
at affordable prices. She was named
most promising new funeral director
at the Good Funeral Awards last
year. Mardall, who has helped more
than 160 families, expects turnover
to hit £1.25m next year.
Starting out on the Tesco graduate
scheme, Panayiotou is now the
youngest procurement director at
drinks giant Diageo, where she
manages a global portfolio worth
£400m. In three years, London-born
Panayiotou has changed the way
consultancies are managed at
Diageo and is leading the paper,
packaging and metals team through
a cost-reduction programme.
After five promotions in less than
four years, Parra left a successful
digital career at GlaxoSmithKline to
make the leap into entrepreneurship.
She co-founded Twizoo, which gives
restaurant and pub recommendations
based on what people are tweeting.
The start-up has just closed a
£250,000 investment deal. Maths
graduate Parra wrote all the
algorithms used by Twizoo herself.
Emma pullEn, 35
hannah rhoDEs, 30
brIE rogErs lowEry, 29
mElInDa roylEtt, 34
In a spur-of-the-moment decision,
Pullen bought her father-in-law’s
leisure hovercraft business, Flying
Fish, in 2011. From 25 sales a year
on a turnover of £150,000 and five
staff, Pullen increased sales to more
than 100 last year, with turnover up
to £704,000. She now has 20 staff and
80% of sales come from overseas.
The former air hostess is committed
to manufacturing in the UK.
Rhodes combined her love of beekeeping with her background in
microbreweries to launch honeybeer brand Hiver last year. With
stockists including The Dorchester
and Selfridges, she has sold 40,000
bottles so far. Earlier this year, she
was crowned queen bee of Ocado’s
Next Top Supplier competition,
judged by top chef Tom Kerridge
and retail legend Sir Stuart Rose.
When the world’s largest petition
platform wanted to set up a UK
office, it called on digital
campaigner Rogers Lowery to do it.
As Change.org’s UK director, she
has increased the company’s user
base here from 100,000 to more than
five million people in two years, with
high-profile campaigns ranging from
‘No More Page 3’ to the Guardianbacked ‘End FGM’ petition.
Australian high-flyer Roylett is one of
the youngest senior female leaders
at PayPal. As the director of UK
business solutions, she leads the
creation of new products and
services for PayPal merchants in the
UK and Europe. Before PayPal, she
was a senior manager at Lloyds
TSB. She recently completed a joint
executive MBA at London Business
School and Columbia University.
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smrutI srIram, 28
CEO, Supreme Creations
As CEO of Supreme Creations,
India-born Sriram runs the
world’s largest ethical
manufacturer of reusable bags
and eco-friendly packaging.
Founded by her father 20 years
ago, the London-based company
produced the first Fairtrade
cotton shopping bag for the
Co-op and pioneered Tesco’s ‘Bag
for Life’. With Sriram at the
helm, Supreme Creations has
expanded into Europe and
beyond supermarkets: it now
supplies the likes of Topshop,
Nike and Berlin Fashion Week.
She is also the founder of the
Wings of Hope Achievement
Award, a social-enterprise scheme
for students.
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35 women under 35
cathErInE thomas, 30
Senior director/international
divorce lawyer, Vardags
Regarded as one of the best
young legal minds in family law,
Thomas is a top international
divorce lawyer. She was made
partner at London solicitors
Ambrose Appelbe by the age of
26, and is now a senior director at
Vardags, one of the country’s
largest independent family law
firms. She has worked on some of
the highest-profile divorce cases
going through the UK courts,
including representing Pauline
Chai, the Miss Malaysia wife of
Laura Ashley tycoon Khoo Kay
Peng, who is seeking Britain’s
biggest-ever divorce payout.
lIsa scott, 32
claIrE VEro, 32
jIll wIllIams, 35
anIta wu, 30
Scott co-founded Gourmet
Gadgetry two years ago while
pregnant, designing and
developing ‘fun-food products’ such
as hot-air popcorn makers and
chocolate fountains. Today, her
Kent-based company employs
eight people and has a range of
14 products, stocked in retailers
including Lakeland, Selfridges,
Tesco and Harrods.
Most people throw a party when
they turn 30; Vero used her birthday
as the impetus to quit her job as
European marketing manager at
GlaxoSmithKline and start her own
business, Aurelia Probiotic
Skincare. Her luxury skincare
products are stocked in Net-aPorter’s beauty section, Space.NK,
Liberty and in boutiques across
Europe, the US, and now Asia.
A rare woman in private equity,
chartered accountant Williams is an
investment director at RJD Partners.
Since joining from PwC in 2007, she
has completed 10 deals, invested
more than £50m in medium-sized
businesses and this year managed
RJD’s sale of Ipes, which generated
the firm’s largest-ever return. The
Oxford grad is also a mentor for the
Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.
Hong Kong-born Wu is a chartered
civil engineer, specialising in
underground structures. At London
Bridge Associates, her roles have
ranged from construction planner on
the £33bn High Speed 2 rail project
to senior tunnel site engineer on the
Bond Street Tube station upgrade.
She became the first elected chair
of the British Tunnelling Society
young members group in 2010.
marta szczErba, 24
Following a stint at Boston
Consulting Group, Polish
powerhouse Szczerba joined The
Hut Group in 2013 as managing
director of ExanteDiet.com and
helped to make it into Europe’s
largest online low-calorie diet brand,
more than doubling sales to £6.5m.
She is starting an MBA at Harvard
Business School in August on a
Fulbright scholarship.
noEllE chEn, 28
Manager, business development M&A, Rio Tinto
Singaporean Chen is mining behemoth Rio Tinto’s youngest
manager in its global business development M&A team, which she
joined in 2011. Bilingual in English and Mandarin, she studied at
LSE before starting her career in London at UBS in its metals and
mining M&A team. Recent impressive successes include negotiating
the sale of two copper mines in South Africa and Australia, the latter
to a Chinese mining business for $820m in 2013 – a significant
milestone for Rio Tinto and Chen.
EugEnIE tEaslEy, 33
Oxford graduate and ex-teacher
Teasley started youth charity
Spark+Mettle in 2011 to help
marginalised young people find
fulfilling careers. Offering
mentoring, online resources and
work placements, Teasley’s Londonbased ‘aspirations agency’ has so far
raised £400,000 and helped 50 18 to
24 year-olds through its Star Track
coaching programme.
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35
women under
35
ones to watch
Erika Brodnock, 33
Mother-of-five Brodnock is the founder of
Karisma Kidz, which aims to teach children
social and emotional skills by using physical
toys and digital games. She recently struck
deals with KD Interactive and Telefónica to
preload the company’s app – Karisma Kidz
Moodville – onto family tablets. Brodnock
is also working with Absolutely Cuckoo,
creators of the CBeebies smash
Waybuloo, on animation projects.
Jess Jeetly, 33
At 5’1, former optometrist Jeetly struggled
to find work clothes to fit her petite frame.
Last year, she launched Jeetly, a clothing
brand for petite women that lets customers
vote on which designs are manufactured.
With no experience in the fashion industry,
she has already sold products in 16
countries, secured retail partners in China
and Russia and is in talks with John Lewis.
Connie Nam, 34
Following a career as an investment
banker in Asia and an MBA at London
Business School, South Korean
entrepreneur Nam launched
contemporary jewellery brand Astrid &
Miyu at the end of 2011. Now with a team of
10, Pippa Middleton as a fan and a
predicted turnover of more than £1m next
year, Nam is about to take the brand global.
laurEn currIE, 27
Co-founder and director of networks, Snook
Trailblazing Scottish entrepreneur Currie co-founded service design
agency Snook, where she is also director of networks, at just 23. Snook uses
techniques drawn from design to support the public sector and charities
including the Scottish Government, the British Council and Macmillan.
Currie is spearheading Snook’s expansion to the US and recently won a
place on MIT’s entrepreneurial development programme. She also set up
citizen forum MyPolice.org, as well as Scottish entrepreneurial network
Nightriders. Currie won the 2012 Young Scot Award for Enterprise.
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