University of Reading Flagship Entrepreneurship Conference 2024
On the 28th of February 2024, The Reading Entrepreneurship Society hosted its fifth (and largest) annual Flagship Conference. For this event, the executive committee (led by Year Two Business and Management with Entrepreneurship student, Ellen Whysall) decided to centre it around three main pillars: Innovate, Inspire, and Connect. The conference was kindly sponsored by Westcoast Ltd. and SCG.
The society welcomed four extraordinary speakers to the Henley Business School, who took to the stage to impart some of their wisdom to the 130 members of the audience. The conference was hosted by Alexander Bly (Year Two Business and Management with Entrepreneurship student) and opened by Jurek Sikorski, Director of The Henley Enterprise Labs (HELAB), Founder of The Henley Business Angels and a true supporter of the Reading Entrepreneurs.
Emma Jones CBE, Founder of Enterprise Nation was the first speaker to (virtually) take to the stage, who spoke about why 2024 is the year to start a business and how lots of the best start-ups start as ‘side-hustles’.
Next followed Scott Stonham, the Director of Asquared’s Impact Accelerator who spoke about his fascinating journey to where he is now and the art of not chasing titles, money and fame.
Jim Malone - the Co-Founder of Fresh & Dry was next to take to the stage and after launching a new brand in the past 12 months he unravelled how he integrates and automates his business processes to make his company so effective.
Finally, with the fireside chat led by Ellen, Prof Philippa Snare, Ex CMO of Microsoft, Ex CMO EMEA Meta, NED and Strategic Advisor spoke so candidly about the possibilities of being an entrepreneur within a corporation, how one should treat a job as a ‘project’, and how she sees AI changing the working environment.
After the event Ellen said: “I have lived and breathed the organisation for this event for the past couple of months and it is so surreal to see it finally happen! The committee have been awesome with making this event possible and seeing so many familiar faces in the audience - it made me so proud to run this society. I am excited to pass the presidency baton over to another budding entrepreneur and I hope they can make this conference even bigger and even better than this year. We need events like this at the university - it inspires so many students to dream that bit bigger and like I said in my closing speech to hopefully go out there and just do it!”
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