AccelerateHER Awards 2020

Join us live for the AccelerateHER Awards 2020 Finals

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Join us Thursday 26^th March as we livestream the AccelerateHER Awards into your home. We’ll be joined by expert judges and our fabulous female founders, hosted by Investing Women’s Chief Operating Officer, Elizabeth Pirrie.

The proceedings will begin at 11am on Thursday, 26 March with the 12 finalists making their pitches. A winner from each of the four sector categories will then be announced online at 2pm.

A public event to declare this year’s winners was set to be held at Barclays Eagle Lab within Edinburgh’s Codebase but, due to concerns about Coronavirus, organisers have now developed an alternative solution to their planned face-to-face gathering.

Twelve aspirational female company founders have been shortlisted as finalists in the AccelerateHER Awards 2020 from four specific categories: Disruptive Innovation; CleanTech and Climate; FinTech and CyberSecurity and MedTech and Science. The short-listed finalists are (in order of pitching):

Disruptive Innovation

• Chantal Epp,  ClicknClear
• Fiona Gillies and Christine Hartland, SMASH Media
• Tersha Willis, Terrible Merch

CleanTech and Climate

• Jacqueline Morrison, Cedeco Contractors
• Aslihan Penley, Nomad Engineers
• Elaine Galston, Tubular Sciences

FinTech and Cyber Security

• Sheila Hogan, Biscuit Tin Planning
• Dr Tayyaba Nafees, CyberShell Solutions
• Kiran Bhagotra, ProtectBox

MedTech and Science

• Diane Harbison, Decipher Analytics
• Claudia Freigang, Hearing Diagnostics
• Lise Pape, Walk the Path

Each winner will secure a free slot on a market-building mission to Europe or North America to showcase their business to industry contacts and global investors.

Rising Star

At our semi-finals on Tuesday 25^th February, we announced the winner of the AccelerateHER Rising Star Award, supported by Aberdein Considine and mha Henderson Loggie. Monika Ohashi, CIO of Edinburgh-based fintech business PolyDigi Tech was named as this year’s Rising Star, which recognises a female company founder with a great early-stage business idea.

More information on the AccelerateHER Awards

Our Vision:

We believe in female founders.  We believe teams that include female founders perform better.  We believe there is huge potential for more female founders to scale their companies internationally.

AccelerateHER Awards 2020

The AccelerateHER Awards are a celebration of female founders and their potential to grow their companies and scale internationally. Now in their fifth year, the awards have provided a springboard to growth for finalists and winners by opening doors to new connections and opportunities through the global AccelerateHER network.

Previous AccelerateHER Award winners have accessed incredible top-level market building missions to California, New York, Boston, Berlin and Dubai – resulting in new investment leads, extensive new business and a much extended network of top industry leaders and finance community ‘movers and shakers’.

One winner from each category will get the opportunity to take part in one of our international market building Missions to Europe, North America or the Middle East. In addition, they will benefit from priceless connections,  industry contacts, potential financiers and learning.

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AccelerateHER Awards 2020 Categories

This year we are splitting the awards into four categories with a winner being selected from each category.

Medtech and Science    
Medical devices, cures for infectious diseases and life changing health management apps are just some of the ideas we would expect to see in this category. We are looking for businesses with life changing innovations for humans or animals.

FinTech and Cybersecurity
Do you have a platform that will change the face of banking and wider financial services? Have you developed a tool that will protect the most vulnerable of data from hackers? Then this category is for you.

CleanTech and Climate
This category is for companies that have found a way to replace plastic, reduce emissions or helping save the planet using technology.

Disruptive Innovation
If you don’t fit into one of the other 3 categories but you have a technology or service innovation that is set to disrupt your sector, then this category is for you.

Rising Star

We would love it if everyone could win, but sadly that’s not the case. We often see businesses that have huge potential but are not quite at the right stage to benefit from winning a place on our market building missions just yet. So our judges will select a Rising Star from among the semi-finalists who will benefit from a package of in-kind support from our professional partners. The Rising Star will be announced at our semi-finals and get the chance to showcase their business at the finals in March.