Investing Women is a growing community of women angel investors.
Scotland has one of the most active business angel communities globally and the UK has a favourable tax regime which incentivises investment in early-stage companies and is the envy of angel investors around the world.
Despite this and despite the fact that women hold 46% of UK wealth, only 5% of Scotland’s angel investors are female.
It’s time for change. Scotland’s businesses and economy need new investment for growth. Investing Women is leading change to help more women into this space.
Find out more about being an Investing Women Angel here
We believe in female founders. We believe teams with female founders perform better. We believe there is huge potential for more female founders to scale their companies internationally.
The AccelerateHER programme of events and trade missions is designed to inspire and support female founders’ journey to growth and scale. Balanced teams which include female founders have been shown to perform better and there is huge potential for more female founders to scale their companies internationally.
We are seeing great results from our dual focus on angels and ambitious founders. Female investors and scalable female founded businesses are increasing; and more investment is going into these exciting innovative companies. The results are delivering diversity and economic growth for Scotland.
Find out more about the AccelerateHER programmes and missions here.
Jackie Waring, Founder & CEO Investing Women
Jackie is a pioneer of women angels ‘changing the face of angel investing’; bringing more women angels into Scotland’s dynamic angel investment community. An active and experienced angel investor herself; she established and leads Scotland’s all-female angel group Investing Women Angels whose members have invested over 80% of their funds in highly innovative female founded/co-founded companies.
Jackie is an entrepreneur with a passion for helping other entrepreneurs. It was this passion which inspired her to establish AccelerateHER; creating a channel and direct help for female founders going for scale. Publicly recognised by Scotland’s First Minister; she is a major player in shaping the ScotCanDo eco-system. The AccelerateHER Awards, workshops, mentoring and other support are achieving tangible impact; boosting the volume and investment in Scotland’s female-led companies. She has also nurtured strong international partnerships leading to regular AccelerateHER missions to Silicon Valley, Dubai, Berlin; and now Boston and New York in partnership with Founders Forum.
Jackie has previously run three companies and been an external policy advisor to UK government; leading on access to finance for women entrepreneurs. She is qualified to Masters level in corporate leadership and particularly loves helping female founders recognise and develop their own leadership ability.
Support Team
Elizabeth Pirrie
Elizabeth Pirrie is the newest member of the Investing Women team working alongside CEO, Jackie Waring to develop the strategic direction for Investing Women.
Elizabeth brings with her over 20 years of accounting experience including 10 as Finance Director of what was one of Scotland’s largest, independent care home providers. For the past six years she has worked in economic development in Scotland supporting start up and growing companies across several sectors including life sciences, technology and tourism.
Elizabeth also runs her own consultancy business, Piuthar Ltd. Piuthar (pronounced pewer) is Gaelic for sister and offers business growth consultancy and virtual financial controller services with a mission to inspire founders to achieve more in business than they thought possible.
linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-pirrie-700b231/
Elaine Bone
Elaine Bone has an established career history in event management and in 2000, set up her company, Brightstar – focussed on events and association management.
Elaine and Brightstar associate, Alison Jones, provide operational support to the Investing Women team and its wider network.
linkedin.com/in/elaine-bone-57b02520
Alison Jones
Alison Jones supports Scotland’s all-female business angel group, Investing Women, and its sister programme, AccelerateHER. Her background includes marketing, events design, governance and business management. A graduate of Political Science and Political Communication, she has a keen interest in policy, female empowerment, economic development and strategic communications.
She works with Investing Women providing operational and executive support, working and supporting high growth founders and collating angel investment.
linkedin.com/in/alison-jones-8a3a7582
The Board
Rhona Campbell
Rhona has over 20 years’ experience in global marketing for technology companies and is currently working with start-up and investor-funded companies to assess, commercialise and launch new products. She has been a member of Investing Women since inception and has invested in and mentored a number of early stage companies as well as represents IW on company boards.
Jackie Waring
See above for Jackie’s bio.
Evelyn Simpson
After a successful international career with JP Morgan Chase, specialising in corporate finance for shipping companies, Evelyn Simpson trained as an executive coach. She co-founded global executive training company, Thriving Abroad and co-authored a book about her work. She continues to mentor executives and entrepreneurs and is an active business angel investor.