That became clear during a recent gathering of female founders in Newcastle where I co-led a discussion as part of the North East Combined Authority’s work on female entrepreneurship.
The session, hosted by Atom Bank in their new headquarters, brought together founders who are often absent from national conversations about growth and investment. We sat around a round table – quite literally – which set the tone for what followed. No speeches. No hierarchy. Just honest accounts of what it means to start and scale a business in the North East.
This event fed into a wider piece of work I’m supporting as part of my role on the North East Combined Authority Business and Economy Board. Over recent months we have been speaking directly with business owners across the region, gathering data on the realities they are navigating. The early signals are familiar. Female founders still struggle to access finance at the pace required for growth. Business support remains patchy and often disconnected from the lived experience of the entrepreneurs it is designed to serve. Many women are succeeding despite the system rather than because of it.
What made this session different was who was in the room to hear it. Lucy Rigby, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, joined the discussion alongside Beth Russell, Second Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury. We were also joined by local leaders from the North East Combined Authority and Newcastle City Council who work closely on the city’s economic priorities. All listened without speaking over the founders who had taken time away from their businesses to share what was and wasn’t working.
The issues raised were not abstract. They were stories of delayed growth because investment decisions take too long. Stories of women juggling childcare while pitching for funding. Stories of navigating support programmes that look impressive on paper but don’t deliver enough practical value on the ground. When policymakers hear this directly, it becomes harder for these issues to be ignored or softened in translation.
This work also highlights a broader national problem. Regional female founders are frequently missing from the high-profile conversations that shape entrepreneurship policy. When the Women-Led High Growth Enterprise Taskforce launched, the North East had no representation and only one member came from outside London. Once appointments were made, adding regional voices proved impossible. These structural barriers compound the very inequalities we claim to be addressing.
Visibility, in this context, is not about profile for profile’s sake. It is about access. When only a small group of people are invited into the rooms where decisions are made, we end up designing support mechanisms around an incomplete picture of entrepreneurship. If we want more women to scale businesses across the UK, regional founders must not be treated as outliers or afterthoughts. Geography should not determine ambition, access or outcome.
The Female Founders project aims to correct this by grounding policy recommendations in direct testimony. The next phase will translate survey findings into actionable proposals for improving support in the region. But the value of this work extends beyond the North East. It offers a model for how government, local authorities and founders can engage in a way that is more collaborative and more representative of the country’s entrepreneurial landscape.
What struck me most during the discussion was not frustration, although there was some. It was the sense of determination. These women are not waiting to be rescued. They are asking for fairness, clarity and a genuine route to the same opportunities afforded to founders in London or the South East.
The UK cannot afford to overlook the potential of an entire region of entrepreneurs. If we are serious about economic growth, innovation and levelling up, then regional female founders must be part of the conversation from the beginning, not added as an afterthought.
The North East is ready to lead. What we need now is a national system that recognises and supports that ambition.
