The Purse Podcast

Dr Louann Brizendine MD, completed her degree in Neurobiology at UC Berkeley, graduated from Yale School of Medicine, and did her internship and residency at Harvard Medical School. She has also served on both the faculties of Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco. She founded the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic at UCSF. Her NY Times bestseller: The Female Brain and its follow-up, The Male Brain continue to be read around the world. 

Her new book THE UPGRADE: How the Female Brain Gets Stronger and Better in Midlife and Beyond released on April 19, 2022. Now as the Lynne and Marc Benioff endowed professor of clinical psychiatry at UCSF, Dr Brizendine continues to speak, write, research, and consult.

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Jill Pay is a former Serjeant at Arms in the House of Commons and she was the first woman to hold this position in 600 years. Her appointment was unusual in that her predecessors all came from a military background, whereas Jill’s experience has been in business management.  She retired in January 2012.

Since leaving Parliament, Jill has held a number of senior roles for organisations including the children’s literacy charity Coram Beanstalk, the women’s business network Savvitas Global and the Women and Enterprise All Party Parliamentary Group chaired by Craig Tracey MP.

Jill leads The Gender Index, the largest ever study into female entrepreneurship in the UK.   She is a major driving force behind the growth  and empowerment of female entrepreneurs.

Jill is a Non-executive Director of mnAI, the data platform that powers The Gender Index.

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Kisha Mays is a successful serial entrepreneur, visionary global business development strategist, a best-selling author, an angel investor and a philanthropist.

Her primary focus is on helping to scale 1 million fearless female entrepreneurs generating a minimum of $1 million in annual revenue, turning them into unicorn global businesses through the HerStory Made Angel Fund, which is a fund exclusively for female founded companies. She pays it forward by supporting nonprofits worldwide that specifically support and empower women and girls.

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Jordan Dargue is a founding director, non-executive director, Women Angel of the North, investor, talent & business growth consultant supporting start up, early stage and scaling organisations to reach their potential.

She is a senior business leader operating across the investment, finance and business growth landscape. Jordan is also a mentor and advisory board member, helping start-ups, early-stage and high-growth businesses across the UK connect with the right investors and then supporting those businesses with commercialisation, marketing recruitment and retention to ensure the very best strategies are implemented to and grow and scale commercially.

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Anna Raptis is the Founder and CEO of Amplifica Capital. 

Amplifica Capital is the first female focused VC firm in Mexico. They make investments that have a positive impact on the lives of women to increase their opportunities and participation in the economy.

Anna is an investor with over 25 years of experience. Her guiding principle is invest in the change you want to see.  Anna’s experience includes investing across sectors and geographies in international equities, funds, energy, real estate and as an angel investor and limited partner in venture capital funds in Mexico and the United States. She was recognized as one of the top female investors by the Latin American Venture Capital Association.

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Sharon Vosmek is the CEO of Astia and Managing Partner of the Astia Fund. Astia is a global organisation  that works to level the investment playing field for startups that include women. Ms. Vosmek developed  Astia’s creative, proven approach to investment – called the Astia Expert SiftTM - that eliminates bias in the  investment screening process and contributes to the success of female entrepreneurs and their ventures.  Well-regarded around the globe, Ms. Vosmek is known for her opinions, research and commentary on the  importance of women leaders as integral to innovation and high-performing entrepreneurial teams. She  has spoken at the United Nations and given lectures at numerous universities on the topic of building  inclusive ecosystems. She is an Advisory Board Member to two venture Funds, E²JDJ Venture Fund and  Illuminate Ventures and serves on the Boards of Ozo Innovations and Pagedip. Ms. Vosmek lives and  works in San Francisco.

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Ella Chase Hyland is the co-founder of Wellth Works, which cultivates and develops authentic feminine leaders, showing women that they create success while integrating balance and fun. Ella is a dynamic and innovative speaker, facilitator, and mentor. She is a recognised authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, and organizational turnaround.

Before launching Wellth Works, Ella spent a decade in sales consulting Fortune 200 companies and private enterprises on disaster recovery and business continuity strategy via emerging technology platforms (think about the “cloud” before it was commonplace), closing over $1 Billion in sales.

Ella is a certified CTI professional coach, and is a Northeastern University alumnus, having graduated summa cum laude with dual bachelor’s degrees. You can find Ella traveling the globe, exploring new cultures and adventures, especially those that involve being in, or on, water.

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Merryn Somerset Webb is Editor in Chief of Moneyweek, the best selling financial magazine in the UK. She is also a contributing editor to and weekly columnist for the Financial Times. She has just published her second book, Share Power: How Ordinary People Can Change the Way That Capitalism Works - and Make Money Too.

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Marcia Dawood is an investor in over 200 early stage private companies. In addition to her own investing, she is a Venture Partner with Mindshift Capital and a part of the investment committee for Next Wave Impact Fund.  She also serves as a board member and advisor to Zive and Misfits Bakehouse.  SheEO is an organization Marcia actively supports.

She currently serves as the Chair of the Board of the Angel Capital Association (ACA).  The ACA is the professional society for angel investors in the US and globally.  Marcia also is a founding member and current chair of the Growing Women’s Capital group building syndication and collaboration among US investment groups focused on women-led companies.

She received an MBA from the Global Executive program at UNC’s Kenan Flagler’s School of Business, OneMBA.

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Professor Heather Jane McGregor, CBE is the Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University. She is a non-executive director on several boards and received the IoD Scotland Chair’s Award in 2020. She is the author of the ‘Mrs Moneypenny’ column (Financial Times 1999-2016) and presented the Superscrimpers show on Channel 4. 

An earlier career in investment banking preceded 17 years as an entrepreneur.  In 2008, she established the Taylor Bennett Foundation, which supports the careers of minority ethnic graduates. She was a founding member of the 30% Club in 2010. Heather is an alumnus of the London Business School (MBA) and the University of Hong Kong (PhD). She has an honorary degree from the University of East London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

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