venture leads

Our team of venture leads combines expert knowledge and practical experience, working with us to transform innovative concepts into real-world solutions.

As executive chairman, Simon turned around a loss-making former Unilever business to become one of the UK’s largest franchise companies, with 12 individual franchise systems, over 800 franchisees and operations in 14 countries. Prior to this, he was a director of a leading City institution providing corporate finance services to entrepreneurial businesses, leading the fastest, largest IPO onto Ofex (now PLUS markets) and helping to raise over £30 million for his clients.

Simon has also served as a British diplomat in Japan, the FSU and Latin America, before becoming head of the Foreign Office’s internal Management Consultancy Unit. In 1999, he graduated with an MBA from London’s CASS Business School, where he was then appointed as Visiting Lecturer in International Business Development, teaching business culture in Asia and leading an annual study tour to Japan. In 2001, he co-authored a professional textbook on starting up and running entrepreneurial businesses.

Dave Dawes

Nurse First

Dave Dawes is a nurse and has been a founding member of 4 social enterprises (including Entreprenurses CIC) over the last 8 years. He is the first nurse to be elected to the Council of the Social Enterprise Coalition and the first social entrepreneur to be elected to the Council of the Royal College of Nursing. He has worked with a number of PCTs and advises NHS organisations and start-up entrepreneurs on governance models, raising finance, business planning and developing strategy. In 2003, he co-founded the European Nursing Leadership Foundation with Ali Handscomb, which was one of the UK’s first not-for-profit management consultancies.

He was one of the youngest Chief Executives in the NHS (East Manchester Primary Care Group) and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on social entrepreneurship, e-learning and leadership. He has served on a number of boards including Social Enterprise Coalition Council, CHAP, SELNET, European Nursing Leadership Foundation, Brook Advisory Centres, RCN Council, East Manchester PCG and the North West Board of the RCN.

Sharla Duncan

YELP Students

Sharla founded YELP Students while a student at King’s College London. She has grown the organisation from just herself mentoring a young girl from her local church community in 2007, to over 1,500 students across six university campuses applying to be mentors and tutors in 2011. Her vision for YELP is rooted in her own experiences of being a disengaged school pupil from a disadvantaged background, but finding educational success through inadvertently being mentored by a good friend’s family.

While managing and growing YELP Students, Sharla gained a BSc in Biochemistry from King’s College London and is pursuing an MA in Education after completing a PGCE, both from the University of Oxford.

David Baker

Looking Up

David has extensive experience working with support services for disadvantaged people and families. This was initially in the voluntary sector where he worked in a hostel for people with drug and alcohol problems, and then with vulnerable social housing tenants and homeless families in Hackney, East London. From 2004 – 2011 he held several strategic and senior management roles at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the Supporting People programme, homelessness and health and social care. His work included developing strategies for the transformation of adult social care, tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, and reshaping the provision of supported housing services. He also led the design and creation of a number of new services for vulnerable people and families. David began his career in policy and research working for three Members of Parliament, on two research projects, for a think tank and a public affairs consultancy. He has an MSc in European Politics and Policy from the London School of Economics.

Rob Fitzpatrick

Opportunity Unlocked

Rob Fitzpatrick has worked in the fields of mental health, social care, housing and criminal justice for over 20 years, initially as a front-line practitioner. He worked as an action researcher and development manager with the mental health and criminal justice charity Revolving Door Agency and also as a project manager in the Criminal Justice Team of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. In 2009 Rob established Confluence, a mental health, social care and criminal justice service development consultancy which supports multi-agency thinking and responses to offenders with complex needs. He holds a MSc. in Voluntary Sector Organisation from the London School of Economics and a MA in Consultation and the Organisation from the Tavistock Centre.

Steve Coles

Social Business Partnership

Steve has worked in and with organisations large and small, in the private sector and third sector, both in the UK and abroad. His experience ranges from working in a start-up leadership development consultancy to managing a $400million procurement budget for a group of civil engineering companies in the Middle East. He is the founding Director of Intentionality CIC and is also Social Enterprise Development Manager for The Salvation Army in the UK and Republic of Ireland. He has advised numerous clients on social impact measurement and reporting, and at the Salvation Army he has developed the organisation’s definition and strategy for social enterprise with a particular focus on building social enterprise into the provision of employment and homelessness services.

Steve is a trustee and the vice chair of the board of Eikon, a Surrey-based youth work charity, as well being a member of the Social Enterprise Coalition Council, a member of the Social Return on Investment Network and a Fellow of the RSA. He has an MBA from Imperial College Business School, in which his research focussed on social enterprise and well-being, and a BSc in Human Cybernetics from the University of Reading.