New appointments to Innovate UK’s council
UK Research and Innovation has appointed two new members to Innovate UK’s council.
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UK Research and Innovation has appointed two new members to Innovate UK’s council – Isabel Fox, a General Partner and manager of an early stage deep-tech fund and Matt Clifford MBE, cofounder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, the leading global talent investor.
Innovate UK’s council is responsible both for advising Innovate UK’s executive chair and making decisions, as delegated to it by the UKRI Board and sets overall objectives and direction.
The council meets 6 times a year. Members have a range of expertise in research and innovation that is drawn across business, entrepreneurship, investment, technology, economics and business impact evaluation, and have different characteristics and professional backgrounds.
Dr Ian Campbell, Innovate UK’s interim executive chair, welcomed the appointments saying:
Isabel and Matt bring amazing experience and expertise to their new roles at Innovate UK.
Their insight, along with that of the other members of the council, will support Innovate UK mission to drive economic growth by backing the best of British innovation.
Today’s announcement is one of a number of council appointments made by UKRI.
Biographies
Isabel Fox
Isabel Fox is one of just a handful of female General Partners in the UK, who has raised and manages an early stage deep-tech fund.
With a portfolio of ground-breaking founders who are daring to disrupt the status quo and improve the world we live in across human health (healthcare, life sciences, agriculture, food and wellness).
At Luminous Ventures, Isabel has the opportunity to indulge her passion for innovation, investing in visionary founders with breakthrough technologies and backing deep-tech and science that matters.
The portfolio includes: Synthace, Hadean, Optellum, Ellipsis, Vital Health, BioBeats, OxfordVR and many more.
Before venture capital, Isabel founded two corporate PR firms focused on the venture ecosystem (two exits), co-founded two software start-ups (one exit) and been an active angel investor in the UK and US.
Matt Clifford
Matt Clifford MBE is cofounder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, the leading global talent investor.
Entrepreneur First invests in ambitious technical individuals to help them build world-class deep technology start-ups from scratch in London, Berlin, Paris, Singapore, Bangalore and Toronto.
Since 2011, Entrepreneur First has funded over 150 companies valued at almost $2bn. Matt sits on the board of Code First Girls, the technical education non-profit, which he co-founded.
Before starting Entrepreneur First, Matt worked at McKinsey & Co and earned degrees from Cambridge and MIT, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He was awarded an MBE for services to business in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours.