Access to funding: The key to improving UK productivity?

Schellion Horn is a partner leading our economic consulting team. A postgraduate economist by training, she brings over 20 years of experience providing regulatory and competition economic advice, including expert testimony, to the panel. Her clients include public sector entities and corporates, and she works in the UK and internationally with experience in consultancies and in industry.

Melissa is an award-winning entrepreneur in the fields of food technology and additive manufacturing. She brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial success and several successful exits to the panel, having raised the highest ever female founder seed round in UK history after founding Rem3dy Health in 2019. She is also the Founder and CEO of Nourished – the world’s first 3D-printed personalised gummy stacks.

Nick is in the Midlands investment team, based in Birmingham. He has more than 20 years transactional and private equity experience as both an advisor and an investor. He has significant expertise in leading investments in technology, business services and consumer markets – working alongside entrepreneurs and business owners as they grow and scale their companies.

The Institute for Government (IfG) is a leading independent think tank that works to make government more effective. Tom leads its work on local growth, and leads and contributes to projects on public services, fiscal policy and regulation. He has an MSc in economics and was previously an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, working on public finances and tax policy, before joining IfG in 2019.

Having previously spent almost a decade at RBS, Deepak has extensive experience of supporting UK-based businesses with debt lending. He leads Shawbrook Bank’s Financial Sponsors product offering in the Midlands, supporting sponsor-led buyouts. Before joining Shawbrook, he was a partner at Springboard CF, where he focused on debt advisory mandates.