North East business leaders gather to promote investment into female-founded high growth companies

A scheme that wants to drive more investment to female-led business in the North East has established a board of notable regional business leaders.

The Lifted Project intends to steer capital towards female-founded, high growth businesses and is a five-year project that is aligned with the Government's Investing in Women Code - a national effort to support female entrepreneurship. It is described as a data-driven approach, which uses regional insights to uncover latent high growth businesses.

Now, a Newcastle-based board has been created to steer the projects involvement in the region, alongside four other cities in Scotland and the North including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool . The board - led by chair, Debra Leeves and vice chair, Fozia Saleem - includes six sub-groups that will focus on finance, marketing and sign-posting, events for female entrepreneurs, role models, policy and angel investors.

Forming the group are Gill Hunter, managing partner of Square One Law; Emma Gaudern, CEO of EMG Solicitors L