The Judges

Ann Francke is Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute, the UK's leading professional body for management and leadership with an international member community of over 220,000. She started her career at Procter & Gamble and has held senior executive positions at Mars, Boots, Yell and BSI. Ann is an expert in Management and Leadership in the workplace, and speaks frequently in the media; she is a regular columnist for The London Times. In 2020 she was awarded an OBE for services to Workplace Equality. She authored ‘Create a Gender-balanced Workplace,’ and the ‘Financial Times Guide to Management’. In 2023, she was awarded the inaugural Memcom Outstanding Contribution Award, for her work in championing the membership sector.

Dominic currently heads up the multi award-winning commercial cleaning & facilities company Cleanology, co-founded with his mother over 20 years ago. With over 1,400 staff across London and all major UK cities, the business counts embassies, blue-chip corporations, luxury retail and even royalty amongst its clients. Previously, Dominic set up and ran a number of other successful businesses, including the high-profile TucTuc Limited, Europe's first motorised rickshaw service. As well as featuring in the international media across the world, Dominic appeared on the BBC's Dragons' Den TV show in 2007. Dominic takes a keen interest in current affairs and campaigns on numerous issues, as well as having stood as a Parliamentary candidate in Leeds East in 2005. Dominic frequently appears as a speaker on panel discussions and at conferences. He also regularly writes articles and provides commentary and expert advice in the trade and national media, having appeared on Sky News during the coronavirus pandemic.

Jason Mahendran joined investment firm Growth Partner as CEO and managing partner in September 2023 and has over 16 years’ experience working with consumer and retail brands in multiple markets. He started his working life at J.P. Morgan in mergers & acquisitions, then joined the corporate strategy team at the Woolworths Group (Australasia’s largest retailer), prior to being appointed the general manager for strategy and investments at BBRC, a multi-billion-dollar family office focused on retail. Immediately prior to joining Growth Partner, Mahendran was a partner at Active Partners, a leading consumer-focused fund where he spent seven years. Whilst there, he led investments in global brands across apparel & accessories, beauty, hospitality and leisure, and consumer technology. Mahendran enjoys partnering with ambitious entrepreneurs who are passionate about creating best-in-class consumer experiences – and is excited to support them as they realise their plans.

Jeremy Middleton is a self-made businessman and angel investor.
After a career in brand management with Procter and Gamble, Jeremy spent a period in management consultancy with PWC before starting a series of businesses in partnership with Richard Harpin. One of these businesses was Homeserve PLC, a multinational emergency repairs company, which went on to become a FTSE 100 business, employing over 10k people across Europe, the USA and Japan. HomeServe was bought by Brookfield Asset Management for over $5bn in 2023. In 2000, Jeremy founded Middleton Enterprises Ltd, a successful family office investment company specialising in growth capital. This was set up with the intention of being the flexible, friendly investment partner Jeremy wishes HomeServe had in its earliest days. Middleton Enterprises currently backs several businesses, offering ambitious entrepreneurs in the early stages of profitability, both strategic and financial support.

Matt is the Executive Chair and Co-Founder of consumer-focused investment and innovation firm True. With $1bn assets under management investing across venture capital, private equity and public equities and its own proprietary strategy, innovation and technology arm advising the likes of Walmart, ABF, Warner Brothers, Johnson & Johnsons, Primark and M&S, True is one of the fastest growing firms in Europe. Following a successful corporate career at JP Morgan, Deloitte and Lehman Brothers, where he advised a collection of the world’s largest and most disruptive retailers. Matt co-founded True with Paul Cocker in 2013, initially as a private investment vehicle to build and ultimately realise two successful e-commerce businesses in his spare time. As an entrepreneur himself, Matt is passionate about creating cultural change in the investment industry and reimagining it as something fundamentally more helpful to founders, start-ups, scale-ups, and industry giants. He strongly believes in putting equal emphasis on people, planet and profit, a commitment underlined by True’s B Corporation Certification and support for a number of countrywide social mobility charities and foundations.

Sara Daw, entrepreneur, researcher, writer and speaker.

Listed in the 2024 E2EFemale100, Sara is passionate about designing the future of work for C-level talent and organisations. As well as publishing the first research on the Access Economy for C-suite talent in her second book, Strategy and Leadership as Service, she is business owner and group CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, the global number one provider of part-time and fractional C-suite professionals. Sara is a graduate in Chemistry from Oxford University, a Chartered Accountant, holds an MBA from The London Business School, and a Mastère Spécialisé® in Consulting and Coaching for Change, run jointly by Oxford University (Saïd Business School) and HEC Business School in Paris. She is currently pursuing a part-time Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) at Warwick Business School.

Deirdre Mc Gettrick is the founder of the UK's #1 furniture search and comparison platform ufurnish.com. Bringing together 1m+ products from 100+ furniture retailers all on one website. ufurnish.com saves time, money and eliminates the fear of missing out on undiscovered items. Clicking out, the consumer buys directly from the retailer.

Award-winning entrepreneur and bestselling author of WIN!, Donna O’Toole is the founder of August Recognition - a top global awards agency. Named one of the world’s Top 25 Customer Experience Influencers, Donna has helped hundreds of businesses, brands, teams and leaders across the world to create high-impact commercial and cultural results by achieving valuable recognition for their achievements.

Gregory is a McInroy & Wood Board Member and Investment Director based in London. He has over 26 years' experience in investment management. Prior to joining, Gregory was Co-Chief Investment Officer and Head of Investment Research at the listed bank, Arbuthnot Latham in London. For the past decade, Gregory has been frequently quoted by the major media outlets such as Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the FT discussing macro-economic affairs and financial markets. He formerly held positions with Merrill Lynch and Oppenheimer.

Founder and MD of YUnique Marketing Ltd, Jarmila Yu, is a globally ranked Top100 CMO, a Chartered Marketer, and a Top50 Business Advisor. A multi award-winning businesswoman, Jarmila is passionate about forging strong links between business and education, and is a champion for developing marketing excellence.   Having spent 25 years building her career in companies ranging from start-ups to some of the world’s largest brands, she then established her marketing consultancy in 2016 making it her mission to provide the CMO Advantage to support ambitious SMEs to achieve dramatic results and growth. She has since guided multiple companies to grow from start up to scale up and scale up to major player in their segment.   A frequent awards judge and mentor, she speaks at events and is featured in business and marketing publications, sharing her expertise and encouraging entrepreneurs to leverage the power of excellent marketing and communications, whilst supporting marketing talent development to enable them to unlock their potential to drive economic growth.    Jarmila proudly serves as Chairman of the Surrey Branch of the IoD, the International Advisory Board at the School of Business & Management at Royal Holloway University of London and the Talent Committee at the DMA.

Joanna was a BBC Apprentice Final five candidate in 2017. Her background and experience is in marketing as an Agency Development Manager on behalf of Google, an independent digital marketing consultant and currently co-founder of digital marketing agency 'So 93' in Leeds. Along with her team, she specialises in helping business grow through Google Ads, Social Media and Motion Graphic video production. She remains a weekly current affairs commentator for national television and radio broadcasters; with credits for BBC News, Sky newspaper review, and ITV's Good Morning Britain. With a passion for civil society as well as business, Joanna is a board member for Impact Education Multi-Academy Trust, English Speaking Board International and is Goodwill Ambassador for water poverty charity Pump Aid.

Kate is a founder, organisational development consultant, executive coach and mentor. For over 25 years, Kate has led and nurtured teams in various organisations, enabling them to excel under pressure. She’s seen from the inside and out, how to create engaged, high performing, happy teams. A former Magic Circle solicitor, Kate spent 15 years as an Operations Director in experiential event management, running international events for companies like HSBC, VMWare, Unilever, and managed BBC SPOTY for several years. Kate moved into business transformation and change, helping large organisations thrive. Today, Kate is an award-winning ICF Accredited leadership coach, a PRINCE2agile Practitioner and a 5Voices Master Practitioner, and is also the founder and MD of organisational development consultancy, Meraki People, knowing that 'Nothing Great is Made Alone'. She was recently named as National Coach of the Year at the National Coaching Awards. Kate is one of the cohort facilitators for the Business Leader 'Founders 250', Vice Chair of the IoD Surrey, a member of the Association of British Mentors and a keynote speaker.

Michael Moore is Chief Executive of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Michael and his colleagues are focused on supporting the development of the private capital industry, as it invests in thousands of businesses and supports millions of jobs across the UK. As policymakers work on the competitiveness of the UK’s investment climate, Michael is confident that private equity and venture capital will continue to create significant public value through investment in growth, innovation and people. Over the past 30 years Michael has operated at senior levels in both politics and business. In his political career he served in the Cabinet at the time of the Coalition Government, as Secretary of State for Scotland. He was a Member of Parliament for 18 years. After the 2015 General Election, Michael became a Senior Advisor at PwC. Prior to entering politics, he qualified as a chartered accountant with the firm.

As a Founder, Director and CIPD qualified consultant, Richard supports leadership teams to create winning transformational strategies, trains managers to get the best performance from their teams and develop the capabilities of sales teams to accelerate their performance and results. He runs an in-house top team accelerator for scale ups called Dragonfly Academy, a listed programme with the Scale Up Institute to elevate leadership, team and business development capabilities for sustainable growth. More recently, Richard has been appointed Scale Up Ambassador for the Institute of Directors and is the Founder of Tech West England Advocates, supporting West England Scale Ups and the regional eco-system

Varun Bhanot is the Co-founder & CEO of MAGIC AI (https://magic.fit) MAGIC is the UK's first AI Personal Trainer and was founded in 2021 in the South East. After an extensive period of R&D, MAGIC announced their $2.5m venture capital round in July 2023 led by Fasanara Capital Angel investors into MAGIC also include the CEOs/Senior executives from Spotify, Stripe, Tough Mudder, Facebook, Citigroup, as well as the founders of major British success stories including Citymapper, OLIO, Beamery, Heights, Humanity and Signal AI. Though being a new startup, MAGIC has already attracted a strong team of brand ambassadors and workout content creators including: Former England Cricket Captain and legend Sir Alastair Cook, Former Manchester United and England legend Jesse Lingard, Strictly Come Dancing champion Katya Jones, Team GB's record breaking champions Desiree Henry & Asha Philip, England Rugby’s Celia Quansah. Within their first year of launch, the MAGIC product is already sold in London’s Selfridges and Westfield White City. Varun previously scaled tech startup Hubble from founding to £10m+ in VC funding and built non-for-profit UNHOUSED.ORG. He studied Entrepreneurship at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and did his Law undergraduate at the London School of Economics (LSE).