Female Founders Forum: Barclays' Julia Rogan on Why Mentoring Really Matters

This week saw the launch of the latest report from the Female Founders Forum, a group of the UK’s most successful female entrepreneurs, established by Barclays and The Entrepreneurs Network in 2016.

We discussed the report, Mentoring Matters with Juliet Rogan, Head of High Growth and Entrepreneurs Coverage at Barclays, and a member of the Forum, at the launch event at Blooming Founders in Shoreditch, London. The report summarised a year of ‘speed mentoring’ events, connecting experienced businesswomen with aspirant female entrepreneurs, which took place at Barclays Eagle Labs based across the UK. 

“Looking back, we’ve had such a positive year, 2017/18 has seen us really step up our work with the Female Founders Forum” said Juliet, who is responsible for leading Barclays offering to high growth businesses across the UK. 

“The reason I decided to join the Forum is because I’m passionate about boosting female enterprise across the whole UK, and ensuring we at Barclays offer all the support we can to those starting and scaling their businesses. 

“It’s not just because I happen to believe women make brilliant entrepreneurs,” said Juliet. “Studies show that gender diversity is positively correlated to both profitability and value creation, so it makes total sense from both a business and personal perspective.”

The report outlines a series of recommendations from the Female Founders Forum for Government, the media, and funding bodies on how to tackle gender-specific barriers to entrepreneurship. 

Juliet, who trained as an accountant with KPMG before beginning her career at Barclays in 2010, has worked across Barclays Corporate and Investment bank, specialising in the Tech Media and Telecoms Sector, before leading the development of our high growth franchise.

“In my role, I hear first-hand from UK entrepreneurs about the challenges of starting and scaling a business. We’re determined to help our fantastic female (and male) customers and clients through products such as our venture debt offering, entrepreneurs mortgages, specialist high growth relationship directors and of course access to our wide network of events and experts.”

The report looks at how to tackle gender-specific barriers to enterprise in the UK, and contains a series of recommendations for Governments, the media and business. For instance, the report calls on the UK venture capital industry to meet with representatives from professions such as law and medicine to learn how some have managed to make gender progress. Mentoring Matters says that VC firms should also support organisations such as the British Venture Capital Association in its efforts to promote and support more women in the venture capital industry.

“I’m really optimistic about the future of enterprise in this country. For me, backing female founders forms a core part of backing the UK.”

Read the report and find out more about the Female Founders Forum