Host: Kath Easthope, Co-Founder and CEO, Boardwave

Speakers:

Flavilla Fongang: CEO, Black Rise

Sam Smith: Co-Founder, The SuperScalers

Event Partner: HSBC Innovation Banking

Following an inspiring session at London Tech Week, we’re back and digging deeper. Join us for a bold, honest conversation on what it really takes to help women founders scale.

The momentum from our last session was clear: the room was alive with insight, urgency, and a shared commitment to do more. Now, we’re going deeper into the structural challenges women founders face, and the transformative potential of community, capital and visibility to overcome them.

With leading voices from across the scale-up ecosystem, this panel will explore how investors, operators and ecosystem builders can move from performative allyship to lasting impact through access to funding, equitable networks and founder-led collaboration.

Chaired by Kath Easthope (Co-Founder & CEO, Boardwave) and featuring Flavilla Fongang (CEO, Black Rise) and Sam Smith (Co-Founder, The SuperScalers), this session tackles an important question: What’s really stopping women from scaling?

Each speaker brings lived experience, hard-won lessons and a challenge to the room:

“No one is coming to save us. But we can save each other.” – Flavilla Fongang

“There are only 80 female founders in the UK who have scaled to £50m. That needs to change.” – Sam Smith

This isn’t just another conversation. It’s a call to action. Together, we’ll go beyond the headlines to identify real solutions, led by the women already building what they couldn’t find.