Gail is the founding partner of Lavender Ventures, a fund dedicated to investing in early-stage female health and wellbeing companies. Passionate about empowering women and advancing female health, she brings a unique blend of expertise from both corporate and startup/scale up environments.

Previously, Gail was a managing director at Accenture, with extensive experience in scale-ups, economic development, and a Masters in International Business.

She is also a proud member of the femella Advisory Board, a membership organisation that supports young professional women in reaching their full potential. Beyond her professional endeavours, Gail is an ultramarathon runner and the author of a book on nutrition.

June Angelides MBE is a Venture Partner at Samos Investments, where she has been investing since 2018, bringing over 13 years of experience across venture debt, venture capital, and entrepreneurship. She began her career at Silicon Valley Bank, working on the Venture Debt and Early-Stage Banking teams, before launching her own startup, which she ran for three years before transitioning into investing.

At Samos, June focuses on backing transformative businesses, including several pioneering healthcare startups such as Micrographia, Lantum, Lighthearted AI, and Level Zero Health, all of which are driving innovation in healthtech and life sciences.

Beyond her work at Samos, June is an active angel investor with a growing portfolio of women-led businesses and a passionate advocate for diversity in venture and technology. She sits on the boards of Jude, Flair, Ruka, and Everpress, mentors founders at Oxford University, and runs mentoring circles for aspiring VCs and entrepreneurs. Previously, she founded Mums in Tech, the UK’s first child-friendly coding school, which helped over 250 women learn to code.

A recognized thought leader in venture and innovation, June was a Columnist at the Financial Times and served on the UK Government’s Taskforce on Women-Led High-Growth Enterprises, working to break investment barriers for women entrepreneurs. She has been named one of the Most Influential Tech Leaders by the Financial Times and one of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech.
June holds an Honorary Fellowship from the Institute of Engineering and Technology and was awarded an MBE for services to women in technology. She is passionate about fostering innovation in healthcare and looks forward to supporting the next wave of groundbreaking solutions as a judge at this conference.

Dr. Matea Deliu, MD, PhD, MCRGP, is an academic GP, Clinical Lead for Primary Care Digital Delivery, and Clinical Safety Officer at the NHS South East London Integrated Care Board. In this capacity, she leads the digital transformation directorate, assessing and evaluating innovative digital tools to enhance primary care delivery while ensuring clinical safety. With a strong background in health informatics, Dr. Deliu utilises her PhD expertise to leverage population health data analytics for informed decision-making and improved patient outcomes. Her focus includes remote monitoring, AI, and proactive care.

Her leadership experience extends to her role as Associate Medical Director for One Health Lewisham, where she strategically managed a range of clinical services across South East and North East London. In addition to her NHS responsibilities, Dr. Deliu is a trusted health tech consultant. She helps startups navigate NHS regulatory frameworks, formulate robust digital strategies, and ensure their solutions meet clinical safety standards for adoption within the NHS.

Rajeev Mahimkar is a seasoned leader in Competitive Intelligence and Product Portfolio Strategy (CI-PPS) with a specialization in Rare and Genetic Diseases Drug Development. A London Business School Sloan Fellow (2019-2020), Rajeev transitioned successfully from a Research and Development leadership role into his current position in Product Development.

Currently, he is the global leader of the CI and PPS for Biomarin's Skeletal Dysplasias franchise, encompassing Vosoritide, BMN-333, and various lifecycle opportunities. As a core member of the SD Business Unit, Integrated Brand Team, and Asset Team, Rajeev focuses on strategic growth, commercial launch planning, and integrating early R&D lifecycle opportunities for pipeline development. His extensive experience includes leading several research programs from concept to clinical development, such as gene therapies for Phenylketonuria, Hemophilia A, and Hemophilia B. Rajeev also brings a strong background in cross-functional project management and personnel management, collaborating with internal and external academic partners.

Madeleine Nichols is a founder-turned-VC at Empirical, a specialist venture capital firm and venture builder backing Europe’s leading early-stage deep-tech ventures.

Maddy’s background is rooted in research—she holds a PhD in acoustic micro-fabrication from the University of Bristol and a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Manchester. After completing her PhD in functional nanomaterials, she transitioned into the world of startups, initially supporting science researchers with commercialization and innovation training. This led her to work closely with academic founders, helping to build deep-tech ventures as COO of Spin Up Science.

While at Spin Up, Maddy co-founded Protolyst, a software platform designed to help founders organize and track key insights while building their ventures. After three years leading Protolyst, she joined Empirical Ventures as an Investment Associate in early 2024, bringing her experience as both a researcher and operator to help shape the next generation of deep-tech startups.

Benjamín Torrero is a Principal at Boost Capital Partners, a venture capital firm based in London that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies across finance, education, healthcare, and entertainment with a strong product and user experience focus. He is driven by a passion for supporting founders tackling the most pressing challenges in people’s lives—whether it's improving mental health, solving inefficiencies in healthcare, or expanding access to credit for underserved populations.

Benjamín is particularly interested in applying insights from human behavior to product development and innovation. Before joining Boost Capital Partners, he founded and led an Angel Syndicate focused on investing in entrepreneurs addressing inefficiencies in Latin America. Prior to his career in venture, he spent five years as a financial lawyer.

Jenny is known for making digital innovation in healthcare happen. In 2016, Jenny set up and led DigitalHealth.London from scratch to an award winning force in UK healthcare. DigitalHealth.London is best known for its accelerator programme which supports businesses to better navigate and gain traction in the NHS. It also includes a portfolio of other successful programmes such as the Pioneer Fellowship which supports NHS staff to adopt innovations faster and more effectively.

Jenny worked as the General Manager for Womens at Guy's and St Thomas' whilst completing her MBA at London Business School. During this time she collaborated with LBS to host the first ever LBS - NHS consulting projects for MBA students. Jenny has had the pleasure of judging many health tech start-up competitions, including the LBS Health Tech Challenge and Rewired. Over the past few years Jenny has freelanced in senior commercial, operational and partnership roles for many well-known health tech start-ups including Doccla, Oviva, DrDoctor, and Peppy.

Gerard Gregg-Smith invests in companies in Life Sciences, Cleantech, and other sectors, and is available for non-executive and other roles.

He started his career with 10 years in the pharmaceutical industry, initially with Chugai Pharmaceutical (now part of Roche) in Japan, then with Glaxo (now GSK) in the UK. He then worked for 15 years in investment banking (mergers and acquisitions), living and working in three continents, starting with Baring Brothers in London, then Japan for another 5 years, then New York for 3 years, and culminating by joining KPMG Corporate Finance as a Partner.

He then established his own business, GGS Associates, in 2006.

He has raised capital for a number of companies, from early-stage start-ups to profitable companies with valuations over £100m.

He has appointed a number of CEOs, CFOs, Business Development and other senior executives and board directors in Europe, Asia and the US.

He has been a mentor and judge at a number of competitions including MassChallenge, Open Accelerator, Cleantech Challenge, HealthTech Challenge, and MedTech SuperConnector, and an Innovate UK Assessor.

Thang Vo-Ta, is the CEO of Calla Lily Clinical Care, a medical device startup that he co-founded with Dr. Lara Zibners, a former emergency room pediatrician inspired by Lara’s experience from multiple failed IVF cycles - involving hundreds of painful intramuscular injections and leaky pessaries. As the CEO he manages the team and sets its strategic direction, including its commitment to the environment, people and communities as a certified B Corp.

Thang started his career in investment banking & private equity in the NY and London offices at Goldman Sachs, followed by a decade in property acquisition and development, working on London landmarks including St Pancras Chambers & Chiltern Firehouse. Thang has been named a Sunday Times Maserati Top 100 entrepreneur and The Manufacturer's Top 100 manufacturing leader. He has a BSc in management from MIT, is completing a translational health MSc at University of Oxford, and lives in London with his wife and four children.

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