Newcastle Regional Board

Empowering high growth female founders in Newcastle

The Newcastle-based Regional Board is being chaired by Debra Leeves, current CEO of Hull-based virtual reality software supplier, Vertual.

“After more than 30 years leading and investing in high growth companies a quote comes to mind ‘Successful businesses are not built on passion alone’ My mission as Regional Board Chair is to support and increase the number of women-led high growth businesses, and to work with VCs and angel investors to ensure that the flow of capital comes their way.”

Supporting Debra as vice-chair is Dr. Fozia Saleem, the CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, one of the world’s leading contract research organisation (CRO) providing services to pharma, health and nutrition sectors for determining the effects of products on healthy ageing, longevity and neurodegeneration.

“We have brought together regional and private sector experienced leaders alongside dynamic founders to form impactful boards, championing and super charging latent, high growth women led businesses in the regions. All with a common goal to grow the number of female-founded high-growth enterprises, and increase the percentage of capital invested into female founders in the region.”

Jordan Dargue and Helen Oldham
Co-Founders of Lifted Ventures