I’m new at The Entrepreneur’s Network and thought I would introduce myself.
I’ve been around for a while. I’ve done some freelance work for The Entrepreneur Network and the Female Founders Forum. I wrote the Resilience and Recovery report in October, and I have also written a couple of newsletters and blogs.
I’ve had a reasonably varied career up to this point. My first full time role after university was at The Small Business Charter. The Small Business Charter works with business schools to encourage them to support small businesses, both providing support to already existing SMEs in their area and by encouraging their students to start their own businesses. While I was there I helped on a bid for BEIS funding for an SME leadership training programme, which was successful and is now a fully funded scheme with 20 participating business schools. The scheme includes peer-mentoring, which we included, partly because the evidence in The Entrepreneur Network’s report Management Matters.
After that I joined the consultancy Public First. On the policy side, I worked on tech policy, R&D, and pharmaceuticals. On the campaigns side we did projects based on public opinion and through that I have somehow ended up on the front page of The Times. (See if you can spot me.)
I have also worked at a European Space Agency funded start-up, making the world a better place by using satellites to monitor biodiversity.
If you recognise me for anything, it is probably because during the first lockdown I made a political compass quiz which went viral on British Politics Twitter and was mentioned in UnHerd and on the New Statesman podcast.
I’m hoping this eclectic background brings a lot to The Entrepreneur Network. It’s a small and agile team so I think the fact that I’ve done a little of everything is going to be very helpful.
I will be running the Female Founders Forum, and doing some combination of comms, policy, and operations. My main areas of interest are tech, feminism, and housing. My hobbies outside of work are incredibly lame. I’m learning to code, play every Taylor Swift song on the piano, and I run a weekly rationalist book club.
If after reading that last sentence, you still want to talk to me, shoot me an email at aria@tenentrepreneurs.org.