Sophie Pender

Founder & CEO, The 93% Club

Sophie Pender is founder and CEO of The 93% Club. Despite 93% of the UK population being educated in state schools, state-educated people occupy a much smaller percentage of top roles: 34% of FTSE 350 CEOs, 35% of senior judges and 43% of the House of Lords, for example. The 93% Club aims to foster a sense of community and support for state-educated people both at universities and in the workplace.

While simultaneously pursuing a career as a corporate lawyer, Pender launched The 93% Club in 2019 and led it through a period of remarkable growth. The judges were impressed by Sophie’s most recent year’s business performance, as well as the fact that she’s mobilised a social movement behind the work that she is doing in a very short time.

For organisations wanting to help people from working class backgrounds Sophie says the focus must be on the organisational culture. She says: “I think that a lot of organisations are doing a huge amount to get working class or people from working class backgrounds into their organisations. But once they get there, they think the problem is solved. 

“So what I would say to organisations is, what is the kind of culture that you are creating for people when they walk through the door? Are you constantly talking about skiing holidays? Are you constantly talking about the kind of wine that you have with dinner? Are you constantly talking about your second home in Spain?

“There’s so much work that’s being done to ‘fix’ people from working class backgrounds to try and make them ‘acceptable’ and trying to make them assimilate. But actually, there’s not that uncomfortable conversation being had with people that do have huge amounts of privilege, from a class perspective, in saying ‘how do you think we’re contributing to the problem?’”

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Sarah Hopley

Head of Venture Studio from Crisis

Venture Studio from Crisis was created by the homelessness charity Crisis to invest in and scale companies working to help increase access to or the supply of good quality, affordable homes.

Hopley joined Venture Studio in 2021 and has secured significant investment for its own fund as well as supporting partners to raise money and grow their impact.

Hopley went through the trauma of the threat of homelessness herself and says having herself and other people with lived experience of homelessness in the Venture Studio team helps them make better investment decisions. 

“I think we should be basically looking at the end users of any solutions that we invest in, and how we can involve them to make sure that what's being invested in is the right approach,” she says. “It can be really easy to think about impact, but not also think about the diversity of your own team or the governance of the work that you're doing.”

Hopley says adopting a “have a go” attitude will help women in the impact sector thrive. She says: “Social investment, social entrepreneurship is not just reserved for the select few, we all have a right to play and to have a go. I just keep thinking that I can just have a go and, you know, failure is okay. That for me has been really revolutionary.”

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Karen Balmer

CEO, Groundwork North Wales

Karen Balmer is CEO of Groundwork North Wales, a network of charitable trusts dedicated to improving the environmental, social, economic and cultural wellbeing of the people of North Wales through initiatives, local projects and consultancy.

The WISE100 judges were impressed by Karen’s leadership in the intersection between environment and inclusion, ensuring that the impact Groundwork North Wales made was driven by the community.

On the night of the ceremony, Karen spoke about the group’s shift towards a social enterprise model. She said: “We had a cultural change programme to shift from a typical charity model to a social enterprise where we diversify our income streams to backfill grant-funded activities, enabling us to still deliver to beneficiaries in the area.”

Working for an organisation that promotes environmental sustainability can have a positive influence on society, Karen says. “I believe most people agree that there is a need to tackle not only the climate crisis, but also the nature emergencies across the UK. The work that we do at Groundwork North Wales empowers people to make small changes, from the way they utilise natural resources to the way they think about the environment.”

She advises others who focus on improving the environment to work together. She says: “Trying to do something on a lone ranger basis is not going to make the changes that are necessary to stem the effects of climate change.”

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Aakeen Parikh

Founder & Director, Minazi Consulting

Aakeen Parikh is director of Minazi Consulting, an engineering consultancy that specialises in sustainable development and impact solutions to reduce global inequality. Her focus on collaborative design impressed the WISE100 judges.

Aakeen encourages everyone to keep working towards equality, despite the scale of the challenge. She says: “It may seem really incremental, your individual contributions might seem really small, and it can get really frustrating at times as well, when things are really hard, but I don't think you should be disheartened.

“If you think about it, we've already made leaps of progress, if you just think about half how far we've come in the last 100 years. So it's really worth doing and what you're doing, as a woman who is trying to drive equality and empowerment, you're doing a great job.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aakeen uses an engineering analogy to explain the mindset she thinks has enabled her to launch a successful social enterprise. She says: “The mindset that I like to adopt is remembering that what I'm trying to do, or what we're all trying to do, is a really complex thing. It can get really tiring. 

“But, in this sort of situation, it's almost like you're trying to move a pyramid. And how do you move a pyramid? You do it slowly, one brick at a time. So you have to keep reminding yourself that it's about consistency, resilience and positivity.”

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Zareen Roohi Ahmed

Founder & CEO, Gift Wellness

Zareen Roohi Ahmed is founder and CEO of Gift Wellness, a social enterprise that sells organic, plastic-free menstrual products and vegan cleansing bars, and gifts them to homeless women and refugee women through a ‘buy one, gift one’ model.

While collecting her award, Zareen spoke about her visit to a Syrian refugee camp. “I met women who were being forced to cut up spare nappies to use as menstrual products, or they were tearing strips off their clothes or using scraps of whatever they could find.”

This experience motivated her to fight against period poverty through creating a social enterprise, a campaign, and a foundation The Halimah Trust, named after her daughter, Halimah, who passed away aged 19.

Speaking to Pioneers Post after the ceremony, Zareen encouraged other women in social enterprise to trust their instincts. She said: “Follow your gut, and act on it. Act fast. Don’t doubt yourself. What's the worst that could happen? So what if it doesn’t work? You’ve learned another way of how not to do it.”

Her words echoed a reflection she made in an earlier interview with Pioneers Post, where she said she wished she had sought investment for Gift Wellness when she founded it, instead of “bootstrapping it” using her personal savings. “I made a lot of mistakes, but the mistakes made things better than it would have been if I got it right the first time,” she said. 

Being forced to shift her business model from B2B to B2C due to the pandemic also proved the importance of adaptability when running a business. “Don’t bother starting a business if you’re not willing to adapt, because the world is changing so fast. You just don’t know what’s around the corner.”

She added: “One thing women are really good at is adapting. That’s what we do… we juggle, we manage, we make things work. When I met those women in the refugee camps, they were the ones holding everything together for their families, not the men, because they had that instinct.”

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