A recent female founders’ lunch in Newcastle reminded me why creating the right rooms matters just as much as creating the right policies.
Atom Bank opened the doors to their new headquarters and around a round table – an actual round table – we brought together a group of North East founders to talk honestly about what it really takes to start and grow a business here.
The conversation formed part of the wider North East female founder project.
Kim McGuinness, the North East Mayor, asked me as a female founder to lead some of this work with her team, which sits within my role on the North East Combined Authority Business and Economy Board.
The project has been running quietly behind the scenes, gathering insight from business owners across the region.
The early findings paint a familiar picture. Access to finance remains a hurdle. The quality of business support is inconsistent.
Many founders are piecing together advice, confidence and resilience on their own because there is no clear pathway that reflects the reality of building a business outside the major hubs.
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One founder, Blyth-based Nikki Masterman of Inspired HR, talked about the number of women who are diagnosed or identify as neurodivergent.
Her point was clear. If we do not design support that recognises different ways of thinking and processing information, we are setting talented women up to struggle before they have even begun.
None of this is new, but the opportunity to do something meaningful with the insight is.
We were joined by Lucy Rigby, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Beth Russell, Second Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury, along with leaders from the North East Combined Authority and Newcastle City Council.
All four listened carefully to what founders had to say. There was no panel, no presentations and no one talking at anyone.
It was a conversation in the truest sense and that shifted the tone.
When women described the challenges of trying to raise investment while running a business and raising families it landed.
When they explained the gaps in support that seem to recycle through every funding round or policy announcement it landed.
Within minutes it was clear that the lived experience of the people in that room should be influencing decisions made far beyond it.
Sunderland filmmaker Carley Armstrong spoke about something as simple and as limiting as travel.
Out of reach
Opportunities that require London attendance are routinely out of reach for many early-stage founders here.
The cost of trains and accommodation can wipe out a week’s revenue.
These are not small barriers. They are structural exclusions disguised as logistics.
This is the heart of the female founders’ project. It is not a glossy strategy written in a vacuum. It is rooted in the voices of women who are actually building businesses in the North East.
Women who know the difference between what looks good on a slide and what works in practice.
It also raises a bigger question about representation. Too often national conversations about female entrepreneurship happen without a single North East voice involved.
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I have lost count of the number of UK-wide initiatives that somehow forget the existence of regions.
When the Women-Led High Growth Enterprise Taskforce launched, there were no North East representatives and only one member outside London.
Regional founders were then told they could not be added because the appointments were already final.
These are the moments where invisibility becomes systemic.
That is why convening conversations like this matter. Visibility is not a vanity metric. It is a form of access.
When the same handful of people get invited into the rooms that shape funding, policy and reputation, everyone else is left reacting to decisions rather than informing them.
Founders must be heard
If we want more women scaling businesses in the North East we have to make it easier for them to be seen, heard and believed.
The founders around that table were not asking for special treatment – they were asking for fairness, for access to the same opportunities, networks and decision-makers that others take for granted by virtue of location.
Amy Mooney, founder of Mutha Cuva, summed it up well. She talked about the sheer difference in access to finance between London and the North East and how conversations about growth look very different depending on your postcode.
It was a reminder that geography still dictates opportunity far more than it should.
The project is far from finished. The next phase will involve using the survey findings to create practical recommendations that can shift how support is designed and delivered in the region.
But if this conversation showed anything it is that policy only works when it is tethered to experience.
The North East has no shortage of talent. What it lacks are the mechanisms that ensure that talent is recognised early enough and supported consistently enough to thrive.
What stayed with me most was the mix of determination and productive frustration in the room.
The kind that turns into action when people with influence have the courage to listen and respond.
That mix came through strongly in the founders’ voices.
They were not asking for shortcuts. They were asking to stop being overlooked.
‘We’re short of access’
As one put it: “We’re not short on ambition. We’re short on access.”
It stayed with me.
This is a chance for the North East to lead in a space where we have too often been treated as an afterthought.
If we get this right the impact will extend far beyond one lunch, one survey or one project.
It will shape who gets to build, scale and succeed here for years to come.
And that is worth every conversation around every table.