COEL and Birketts join forces for International Women’s Day discussion on risk taking
COEL joined forces with Birketts LLP to host a celebration of International Women’s Day with a breakfast seminar featuring a panel discussion on Women and Risk Taking.
Caroline Hyde, head of ecosystem initiatives and partnerships for Cambridge Enterprise, chaired the questions to an impressive line-up of speakers including Adelina Chalmers, aka The Geek Whisperer, Naily Makagu, founder of Athena Leaders, Catherine Stewart from Cambridgeshire Community Foundations, Jane Hutchins, director of Cambridge Science Park, and Katy Searle, senior controller at the BBC.
The speakers revealed personal experiences which had led them to taking risks. For Catherine it was her husband dying in his 40s leaving her with two children and an internet business to run. Her reflection was “risk was forced on me” and the need to “get on with it” helped her to gain in confidence moving forward.
Adelina shared her experience of arriving in the UK with £80 in her pocket and for her it was a case of “do or die”. After a number of tough years, Adelina now runs a successful business advising engineering leadership on how to accelerate delivery and demonstrate bottom line impact.
Naily had worked for Siemens and Featurespace when she decided to set up her own tech consultancy company. She emphasised the importance of having resilience and bouncing back when you get knocked. Her advice was: “Jump first and work the rest out later. What’s the worst that could happen? If you don’t take a risk, you will never know.”
Jane drew on her experience of starting in a new city. A conversation 14 years ago led her to revisit sailing and the thrill encouraged her to try more and not to hold back. Since then, she has run incubator programmes and continues to support and advise entrepreneurs and start-ups.
Katy joined the BBC at 19 and explained it was hard not to be intimidated when so many of her cohort were men with an Oxbridge education. She said hard work and determination propelled her on - three decades later, she has gone from production assistant at the World Service to a senior controller.
The combined experience and expertise of Caroline and the panel attracted a full house. After the debate, Caroline asked members of the audience who had been persuaded to take more risks to stand up – about two-thirds got to their feet.
Lizzie Bradbury, marketing manager at COEL and one of the event organisers, said: “The idea to explore women and risk taking on International Women’s Day felt very apt and given the incredible panel of speakers, we had a good feeling this would make for an exciting morning. It proved to be just that, with a wonderful turnout, heartfelt anecdotes and reflections from the panel on their experiences and their outlooks.
“The COEL team is very grateful to Birketts LLP for being advocates in hosting an event to celebrate International Women’s Day at their Cambridge office.”
Birketts recently announced that 40 per cent of their partners are female, and since 2019-2020 the proportion of female partners has gone up by 13 per cent.
Maria Peyman, Partner at Birketts LLP, said: “We were extremely pleased to host this event with COEL and to welcome guests to our Cambridge office. The host and panel speakers all had inspirational stories which reflected how risk can be taken as a deliberate choice, but just as often is as a result of circumstance.
“The varied and interesting journeys of the speakers also reflected the reality of modern life and career journeys for many women.”
