Conversations & Webinars

Be Exceptional Series

The Be Exceptional series consists of globally broadcast webinars focused on highlighting exceptional and emerging women entrepreneurs around the world. These conversations feature dynamic speakers, address a range of entrepreneurship-related topics, and are conducted in an interactive webinar format that is broadcast globally. Recordings will be available as podcasts for those who cannot join.

Suggestions for Be Exceptional speakers are welcome at owlc@oba.co.uk.


Podcasts of previous Be Exceptional conversations are available below:


Archive: Zoe Peden, Co-Founder of Insane Logic (May 2016)

Zoe PedenZoe Peden is the Co-Founder and 'master juggler' of Insane Logic, the company behind MyChoicePad - a therapeutic care pathway that uses online tools, games and metrics, and supporting video consultations with qualified speech and language therapists. In her quest to establish Insane Logic, Zoe has raised funds both through angel investors and venture capitalists. Most recently, she was awarded Elle Magazine’s 2016 UK Female Social Entrepreneur Award.

During this recording, we discuss funding and female-led enterprises, including how gender can affect funding and how to overcome funding obstacles. Sean Peters (MBA 2015-16) - whose research in entrepreneurs and gender reveals interesting data on women and funding - moderates the discussion. Listen back, to hear Zoe share her experiences starting and running Insane Logic and the struggles and successes she faced as a woman raising funds for a cause and an enterprise she passionately believes in.

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Archive: Chloe Chick, Founder of Sisu Girls (April 2016)

Chloe ChickChloe Chick is founder of Sisu Girls, an enterprise built on her passion for empowering young girls through sport and adventure. Through Sisu Girls, Chloe hopes to shape girls that are determined, brave and resilient, ready to take on the world with a real sense of self and strength.

Among her many accolades, Chloe was awarded Young Australian of the Year in the UK, a Cordes Fellow and a graduate of the WSLab in Silicon Valley. She’s also a mother who can skateboard and has ran ultra-marathons in the Himalaya!

Listen to the recording to hear about Chloe’s’ experiences of starting Sisu Girls and how passion can help you to dig deep and push forward through all the highs and lows of starting and running an enterprise.

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Archive: Erica Mackey, Co-Founder and COO of Off.Grid: Electric (January 2016)

Erica Mackey is Co-Founder and COO of Off.Grid: Electric, an enterprise geared towards becoming the world’s first distributed clean energy utility. An alumna of Said Business School, it is Erica’s mission to power 10 million households in Africa within the next 10 years, benefitting approximately 50 million people. Erica was recently named by Forbes as one of 30 under 30: Social Entrepreneurs.

Listen to a recording of the first ‘Be Exceptional’ webinar of 2016, where Erica shares her experiences of starting Off.Grid: Electric in Tanzania and Rwanda and what it means to be at the helm of an innovative company operating under challenging conditions.

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Archive: Claudia Batten, Co-Founder of Broadli Inc (July 2014) 

Claudia Batten will openly admit she is digitally obsessed. From her roots in commercial law, she has been a founding member of two highly successful entrepreneurial ventures. Starting with Massive Incorporated, a network for advertising in video games, she helped pioneer “digital” as a media buy. Massive was sold to Microsoft in 2006, where Claudia then spent 3 years scaling the in-game network.

In 2009 she co-founded Victors & Spoils, the first advertising agency built on the principles of crowdsourcing. After two years in market, V&S was majority acquired by French holding company Havas Worldwide. 

Claudia is a passionate advocate for what she calls the Squiggly Line; the often uncomfortable path to achieving exceptional outcomes. She is a believer in taking big leaps and having bad days all in the name of making the impossible possible. 

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Archive: Jean Sullivan, Co-Founder of StarVest Partners (June 2014)

Jeanne Sullivan has been investing in and growing tech companies for more than 30 years. In a conversation led by Peter Tufano, Dean of the Saïd Business School, Jeanne shares with us five stupid mistakes that entrepreneurs typically make and the lessons she has learned about how to get investors to take their wallets out of their pockets.

Jeanne is a co-founder of the venture capital firm StarVest Partners and was a featured speaker at the recent Power Shift 2014: Women in Finance Forum, hosted by the Saïd Business School in Oxford.

 

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Archive: Lisa Xu, CEO of NopSec (March 2014)

Lisa Xu is the CEO of NopSec, an IT security and vulnerability management start-up.  Lisa connects business with technology.  Over the past two decades, Lisa advised Fortune500 enterprises on data security, privacy and technology risk management.

Lisa recalls her Battle Stories of transitioning from a fast-paced corporate consulting environment to a fast-growing start-up.

Lisa shares her experiences with customer-centric design, and how and why she stays focused on customer pain points; how hard yet necessary it is to design repeatable processes in the start-up stage; and why she only hires people who were not born in the US to work in her US office.

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Archive: Michelle Garnaut, Owner of M Restaurant Group (February 2014)

Melbourne-born Michelle Garnaut is owner of the M Restaurant Group.  She is a trained chef and restaurateur with a culinary career that spans over 25 years, and is best known for her series of upscale restaurants in China.

Learn from Michelle's perspective on:

- Cultural leadership through building a brand

- Being a first mover in lifestyle industries in an emerging market context

- Considerations for expats doing business in China

- Involving an enterprise with charitable and cultural ventures. 

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Archive: Diana Nieto (November 2013)

Diana Verde Nieto is the founder and CEO of Positive Luxury, a daily e-commerce lifestyle magazine that combines glossy editorial with luxury online shopping and information on environmental and social responsibility of brands. The mission of Positive Luxury is to enable readers to make better, more informed choices. Diana believes that sustainability is not about introducing niche “green ranges,” it is about embedding sustainability into a brand’s portfolio through operations and the supply chain, in order to normalize it.

Diana is a social entrepreneur with a career history steeped in sustainability. After founding and overseeing sustainability communications consultancy Clownfish in its journey from niche company to a global brand, she went on to be nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2011.

Listen to Diana discuss her social entrepreneurial path, her inspiration to found Positive Luxury, and what it means to be a CEO in a company helping to define its industry.

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Archive: Ute Rother, CEO and Co-Founder of Q-Sensei  (October 2013)

Ute Rother is co-founder and CEO of Q-Sensei, an award-winning search platform based out of Brooklyn, New York and Erfurt, Germany. Q-Sensei offers a new and advanced search technology – called multi-dimensional search – to help businesses and end-users find, explore and leverage business critical information.

For over 10 years, Ute has been developing services and applications that help connect knowledge and information for business advantage. In 2001, she co-founded and became Managing Director of the German social knowledge network Lalisio. In 2007, she oversaw the merger of Lalisio and US search specialist, QUASM to create Q-Sensei. Prior to Q-Sensei and Lalisio, Ute was investment manager at German venture capital group bmp AG and accumulated substantial expertise and business contacts in the technology arena.

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Archive: Be Exceptional Battle Stories: Elena Medo (August 14, 2013)

Elena Medo is a serial entrepreneur with 29 years of experience in life science and medical device start-ups. Her work has focused on helping new mothers overcome lactation issues and she holds several patents covering breast milk production. In 1999, she founded Prolacta Bioscience with the goal of developing the first human milk fortifier made from human milk, which she introduced to the market in 2004.

Elena has experienced the trials and triumphs of building successful medical device companies. Having raised a total of $32 million through private and venture capital investments she knows how to work with multiple stakeholders including investors, physicians, insurers and most importantly, patients. She is currently working on two new projects that will revolutionize the human milk industry and make formulated donor milk available for every baby in need.

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Archive: Be Exceptional Battle Stories: Agatha Kessler (July 10, 2013)

Agatha Kessler, Chairman at Fentress Architects, guides a global design firm that passionately pursues the creation of sustainable and iconic architecture. Designs by Fentress Architects have won over 450 distinctions for innovation and design excellence, and are visited by more than 350 million people every year. Her fascinating journey, before taking the helm as CEO at Fentress Architects for the past five years, includes being an executive in the worlds of finance and technology at Visa and Hewlett Packard. She has earned an MBA, spent four years as a lecturing professor, and has 27 years of professional experience. Her career, and passion toward inspiring a brighter future through charity work, has taken her across the world. She has lived in Hong Kong, the Caribbean, South Africa, Canada, San Francisco, and Denver.

Agatha has led Fentress Architects through a recession and achieved international expansion. She brings leadership and learning to her role where she oversees the advancement of the firm’s strategic vision. A believer that educating the next generation of leaders is essential to the company and the world’s future; Agatha nurtures mentorship across all levels of the design studio while fostering intellectual growth, strategic thinking, and fearless creativity. She has built a team of highly motivated employees, achieving a ‘people-focused culture’ and creating a dynamic, internationally lauded design firm.

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Archive: Be Exceptional Battle Stories: Sharon Kan (12 Jun, 2013)

A naturally sales-focused entrepreneur, Sharon Kan began honing her sales skills at the age of 14, growing the market for her cake business from familiar circles to local restaurants. Later, this focus translated successfully from cakes to children’s creativity when she founded the fourth company she built from foundation to exit: Tikatok.com. Tikatok is the first online book community that empowers children to use their imagination to write, illustrate, and publish their own books and read other books created by children from around the world. It sold to Barnes & Noble in 2009.

Sharon’s current mission is to unleash the creativity and imagination of children by giving them an environment to design and share their original creations online and in print. Previously, Sharon was in leadership roles in a number of start-ups that were bought by Microsoft, Infor and Oracle.

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Archive: Be Exceptional Battle Stories: Jane Chen (8 May, 2013)

What started as a Stanford School of Design assignment for Jane Chen to create a low-cost infant incubator suitable for use in the developing world, quickly became the basis for a growing business called Embrace. Embrace now distributes the infant warmer, which costs about one percent the cost of a traditional incubator, in India, China, Somalia, Zambia and Uganda, and has saved the lives of thousands of premature babies by safely regulating their body temperatures. Tune in on Wednesday, May 8th to find out how she has scaled her business in some of the most challenging geographies in the world!

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Archive: Be Exceptional Battle Stories: Tiffany Bukow (10 April, 2013)

Joining us from Brazil is Tiffany Bass Bukow, an experienced entrepreneur whose businesses have revolved around positive societal metamorphosis. She is currently founder and CEO of a business accelerator called FloripaTech in Florianopolis, Brazil, that provides mentoring, support and early seed money to technology startups. In the last 10 years, Tiffany has raised significant money from the venture capital community to implement her life’s passions into self-sustaining companies that have a philanthropic focus.

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Archive: Be Exceptional: Battle Stories – Jenny Zeszut (6 Mar, 2013)

The first instalment of Battle Stories features Jennifer Zeszut, the founder and former CEO of venture-backed Scout Labs. In this conversation, Zeszut shares painfully true stories of the flawless (not!) sale of Scout Labs to Lithium Technologies for more than $20 million – just 16 months after its launch. Join us for her humorous tales of what it really took to raise millions, build Scout, and then execute a successful exit in less than two years. Zeszut is now founder and CEO of Beckon, which helps marketers understand and beautifully communicate the business impact of everything that marketing does.

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Archive: Be Exceptional: Trailblazers (13 Dec, 2012)

Joining us from the Global Shifts Conference in Melbourne, Australia, Pamela Hartigan (Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) will host a 30 minute audio conversation with SBS alumnae Kylie Charlton (Managing Director & Co-founder, Unitus Capital) and Keely Stevenson (CEO, Bamboo Finance) highlighting stories of how they created their dream jobs in an emerging social impact investing sector.

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