Debbie Wosskow
Female founders raise less than two pence of every venture pound deployed in the UK, and most growth-stage businesses still treat that gap as a marketing problem rather than a capital one. Boards that want to act find they have neither the operator language nor the investor network to move money differently. The question is no longer whether to back women, but how to redesign the pipeline that decides who gets funded.
Debbie Wosskow has founded, scaled and sold three venture-backed companies, and now co-chairs the UK government taskforce that has committed over £255m to female founders, helping organisations turn the case for backing women into a capital strategy.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Debbie Wosskow
- Three exits as founding CEO across PR, the sharing economy, and the women’s network category, giving boards a rare interlocutor who has personally taken capital, scaled a team, and sold the business.
- Co-Chair of the UK government’s Invest in Women Taskforce, which closed over £255m of committed capital for female founders in November 2024, the largest pool of its kind globally.
- Author of the 2014 government review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy”, the regulatory frame that legitimised platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar in the UK market.
- Operates inside the institutions that allocate capital and reputation: Senior Advisor at McKinsey, Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board.
- Co-author with Anna Jones of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019), the playbook that emerged from the AllBright Academy and continues to anchor her keynote material on women in leadership.
Biography highlights
- Founder and exited CEO of three businesses: Mantra (sold to Loewy Group), Love Home Swap (sold to Wyndham Destination Networks, $53m, 2017) and AllBright (co-founded with Anna Jones, exited 2022).
- Co-Chair, Invest in Women Taskforce, appointed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
- Non-Executive Director, Channel 4, since January 2024.
- Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Company.
- OBE for services to business; Freedom of the City of London.
- Author of “Believe. Build. Become” (Penguin, 2019) with Anna Jones, and the UK government’s “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” review.
Biography
The UK economy loses roughly £250bn a year because women start and scale businesses at a fraction of the rate of men. Debbie Wosskow has spent two decades building inside that gap, first as a founder and now as the operator who sits at the table where institutional capital is reassigned. The Invest in Women Taskforce she co-chairs closed over £255m of committed funding for female founders in November 2024, the largest dedicated pool of its kind anywhere.
Her authority on the topic is not theoretical. Wosskow founded and sold Mantra in her twenties, built Love Home Swap into a subscription business that Wyndham Destination Networks bought for $53m in 2017, and co-founded AllBright with Anna Jones in 2016, exiting in 2022. Each business was venture-backed and each exit was completed under her as CEO.
Government and regulators use her as a translator between policy and operating reality. She wrote the 2014 review “Unlocking the Sharing Economy” for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the document that shaped how the UK regulates platforms including Airbnb and Zipcar. She now sits as Non-Executive Director of Channel 4, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and Executive Chair of The Better Menopause, with a board seat on the Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board.
For senior audiences, the proposition is specific: an operator who has built and sold three companies, written the rules for one of the largest new market categories of the last decade, and now controls one of the most consequential pools of growth capital aimed at women in the UK. Her co-authored Penguin title “Believe. Build. Become” remains the public expression of that argument.
Key speaking topics
- Female entrepreneurship and access to capital
- Scaling and exiting venture-backed businesses
- The sharing economy and platform regulation
- Women in leadership and the AllBright thesis
- Investing in women as economic strategy
- Building and selling businesses at pace
- Boardroom voice for entrepreneurs
Ideal for
- Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious operator voice on female founders, capital allocation, and the economics of inclusion.
- CEOs, CFOs and investment committees rethinking how growth capital reaches female-led businesses.
- Financial services, professional services and corporate venture audiences seeking a credible UK policy and operator perspective.
- Female leadership networks and executive development programmes within FTSE-listed and global organisations.
Audience outcomes
- A clearer operator account of what scaling and exiting a venture-backed business actually requires, drawn from three completed exits.
- A working understanding of the £255m Invest in Women Taskforce model and what it signals for corporate capital strategy.
- The argument and the evidence base behind investing in female founders as a growth lever, not a CSR line.
- Practical perspectives from “Believe. Build. Become” on building career and leadership capital as a woman in a senior commercial role.
- A direct read on how Westminster, the City and corporate boards are currently moving on female entrepreneurship.