Praetura合资企业, the Manchester-headquartered venture capital investor, has appointed three new industry heavyweights as operational partners to mentor its growing portfolio of 37 companies.
西沃恩·杏仁, Mark Horncastle and Penny Attridge have all joined Praetura’s operational partner programme, which connects a team of experienced business leaders and former C-suite executives with the VC firm’s portfolio of tech and life sciences businesses to support their strategy and growth.
Siobhan is a senior law professional who spent over ten years at leading fashion retailer JD Sports (JD), including almost eight years as the FTSE 100 company’s general counsel and company secretary.
在她任职期间, Siobhan helped steer JD to success across 32 countries while overseeing many of the firm’s pivotal mergers, acquisitions and minority investments in smaller brands, leading JD towards profits of close to £1 billion.
经过培训的药剂师, Mark Horncastle was previously a partner and the UK head of healthcare at the multi-sector management consultancy PA Consulting, where he spent 12 years driving innovation and transformation within the health sector. 他专攻系统设计, digital transformation and utilising data to enable patient and service outcomes.
As well as leading on PA’s global health & 生命科学战略, Mark led the business’ Manchester office and was heavily involved in Greater Manchester’s healthcare transformation through its devolution plans, including the design of urgent and emergency services, integration of health and social care, and the scaling of primary care services.
The final operational partner joining Praetura is Penny Attridge, who was formerly the investment director for Liverpool-based investor Spark Impact, which was set up to back North West life sciences businesses and managed the £30m North West Fund for Biomedical.
Prior to her work with Spark Impact, 是Spark Ventures的子公司, Penny worked as healthcare consultant, a research clinical scientist and was the founder director of Id-Tech Ltd, a company dedicated to the prevention of sharps injuries in medical settings.
All three operational partners will support businesses within Praetura’s EIS Growth portfolio. Penny and Mark will also lend their expertise to businesses funded by the GMC Life Sciences Fund by Praetura, 包括Re:course AI和scuba. 该基金, 去年推出的, is a partnership between Praetura合资企业, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Cheshire and Warrington LEP and Bruntwood SciTech.
科林·格林, Praetura合资企业合伙人, said: “Our team of operational partners play an essential role in helping our founders build world-beating businesses, because the individuals we appoint have been at the coalface of renowned global companies themselves. 我们创始人的回应, alongside the willingness of our existing operational partners to go above and beyond as mentors, 产生了惊人的影响.”
“The operational partners programme is at the heart of our ‘more than money’ ethos and ensures our founders are receiving practical skills and advice from people who’ve been there and done it, therefore putting them in a better position to supercharge their growth. 继续这种思路, we’re incredibly pleased to have Siobhan, Mark and Penny on board and know their support will be invaluable to our founders.”
The additions take the total number of operational partners at Praetura to seven. Current operational partners include former AO.首席执行官史蒂夫·考斯说, former MPP Global CEO and exited founder Paul Johnson, ex-Dr Marten’s chief HR officer Helen Verwoert and current CEO and founder of OSTC Ltd Mark Slade
