Regional growth initiative launched to make funding accessible to female founders
A newly-launched initiative, supported by Lloyds Bank, has announced multi-award-winning entrepreneurs, Tara Attfield-Tomes and Hephzi Pemberton as co-chairs.
The Lifted Project is a nationwide initiative that is creating regional growth boards in five cities across the UK, in a bid to make high-growth entrepreneurship more accessible to women outside of London and the South East.
The Lifted Project was set up by Zandra Moore, co-founder and CEO of Panintelligence, an award-winning business intelligence software based in Leeds.
It was established as a result of a recommendation from a new government taskforce established to boost private investment in women-led businesses across the UK.
The project has created five Regional Growth Boards in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle with the aim of increasing the number of female-founded high-growth enterprises by 50 per cent within three years.
The initiative is backed and supported by Lloyds Bank and is being led by Lifted Ventures.
Lifted Ventures, co-founded by Jordan Dargue and Helen Oldham, is an early-stage investment connector, existing to increase the flow of early-stage capital to female founders, and to promote the business benefits of backing women.
Research has confirmed that there is a higher proportion of high-growth enterprises, founded by women, in the South East than elsewhere in England due to easier access to funding, connections, knowledge sharing, talent, and customer base.
Despite this, a 2022 report by law firm Shoosmiths found that from the 363,212 active companies that were identified in the West Midlands, 17.1 per cent were female-led. This puts the region as one of the best for female entrepreneurs in the UK.
The Birmingham-based growth board is set to be co-chaired by Tara Attfield-Tomes (pictured), the founder and managing director of multi-award-winning PR agency, EAST VILLAGE.
Tara’s vision when establishing her company was to empower women and underrepresented founders, creating a more level playing field through the power of PR.
Tara said: “Whilst Birmingham has a well-connected ecosystem for early-stage entrepreneurs, we’re still missing the coordination and influence needed to really create change for female founders who want to scale. This lack of focus – and funding – means that incredible women-led businesses are either leaving the region or, worse than that, not reaching their potential.
“We have to make some radical changes to the funding landscape; not just providing better access, but also ensuring that more women hold the purse strings on investment boards and as angel investors. I am truly honoured to be co-chairing The Lifted Project alongside Hephzi; this strategic board has some ambitious goals and I am determined to change the world for female founders.”
Supporting Tara as fellow co-chair is Hephzi Pemberton, serial entrepreneur and current CEO and founder of Honordex. Honordex is a revolutionary data platform that provides insights into the full range of social value metrics to help companies better understand and track their progress over time and benchmark against peers.
In June, Tara and Hephzi will host their first regional roundtable event which aims to bring together founders, investors and regional stakeholders to discuss the imbalance in the region and how the board can harness the power of data to provide female founders with better pathways of support.
The outcome of the roundtable event centred around how to support better access to capital, networks, advice and acceleration, as well as building a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and role models to catalyse and support female founder growth.
