Elizabeth Pirrie is CEO and Owner of AccelerateHER, where she works to amplify the growth, backing and visibility of ambitious female founders across the UK.
A former Finance Director, Elizabeth has spent more than a decade working directly with founders, from early ideas and first funding through to investment, scaling and international growth. That combination of financial rigour and hands-on experience has shaped her view that when talented women struggle to build and fund ambitious businesses, it isn’t the founder who needs fixing.
Today, Elizabeth works across both sides of the investment table, helping founders access the backing they need while encouraging more women to become investors. She works with government, investors and business leaders to challenge how female founders are supported and funded, influence policy and practice, and turn conversations about the funding gap into practical change.
Elizabeth is also a board member of Investing Women Angels, Scotland’s first all-female angel investment syndicate. She is particularly interested in what happens at the earliest stages of the funding journey, when securing the first meaningful capital can be one of the hardest hurdles for a founder to overcome.
After more than a decade working alongside entrepreneurs, Elizabeth has seen plenty of evidence that women don’t lack ambition, ideas or talent. Her focus is on changing the opportunities, networks and capital available to them. As she often says, backing female founders is not a social obligation. It is an economic opportunity.
Jackie is a pioneer of women angels and diversity in investment. An active and experienced angel investor herself; she established Scotland’s first all-female angel group, Investing Women Angels, whose members have invested over 90% of their funds in highly innovative female founded companies.
Jackie is an entrepreneur with a passion for helping other entrepreneurs. It was this passion which inspired her to establish AccelerateHER; creating a channel and direct help for female founders going for scale & investment. Publicly recognised by Scotland’s former First Minister, she is a major player in shaping Scotland’s enterprise eco-system. AccelerateHER now operates UK wide, running female founder accelerators, awards, workshops, mentoring and many other forms of support. This is achieving tangible impact, boosting the volume of investments in Scotland’s female-founded companies by 700% since 2015. She has also nurtured strong international partnerships leading to regular AccelerateHER missions to Silicon Valley and the USA, Germany and Dubai.
Jackie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Non-Executive Director of CPI, a leading independent technology innovation organisation whose multiple centres include the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Glasgow.
She was formerly an Advisory Board Member of the Global Banking Alliance for Women in Washington DC.
Nicki has over 15 years of experience in senior operations and IT leadership roles across industries like aviation, facilities management, and healthcare. For the past eight years, she’s focused on the start-up and scale-up space, starting off with working in several start-ups, then transitioning to helping founders get investment-ready, plan and build software products, and set up solid operational and financial foundations for growth. She’s supported founders through everything from refining business plans and financial models to pitching for funding and navigating investor conversations.
Now part of the team at AccelerateHER and an angel investor with Investing Women Angels, Nicki is passionate about helping founders feel confident and prepared for the investment process. She loves making the right introductions, sharing practical advice, and supporting ambitious businesses as they scale and achieve their goals.
Michelle is a strategic marketing leader with over 16 years of experience delivering growth-focused marketing strategies for ambitious startups and scale-ups across the UK. A passionate advocate for female entrepreneurship, she brings deep expertise in digital strategy, brand positioning, SEO, and performance marketing to the AccelerateHER team.
Michelle studied Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Aberdeen, which shaped her enduring commitment to inclusion and empowerment in business. She spent six years at Elevator working at the heart of Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, supporting thousands of early-stage and growth businesses, many of them female-founded.
As founder of her marketing consultancy, Hoojy, Michelle works as a Fractional CMO and mentor, partnering with ambitious founders and marketing teams to drive growth. She has mentored dozens of female founders and early-career marketers, supporting them with strategy, confidence, and leadership in a fast-moving digital world.
At AccelerateHER, Michelle leads strategic marketing to increase the visibility and reach of our community, programmes and impact. Her blend of strategic insight, commercial acumen and lived experience in the startup world makes her uniquely placed to champion and grow the AccelerateHER movement.
Hannah Laycock brings a distinctive blend of operational expertise, governance experience, and creative practice to her role as Programme and Operations Coordinator at AccelerateHER.
With a career spanning the education, charity, and arts sectors, Hannah has built a strong track record of supporting senior leadership teams, coordinating complex programmes, and designing the behind-the-scenes systems that help organisations run smoothly. Most recently, as Operations and Governance Coordinator at the Highlands and Islands Students’ Association, she led board and committee administration, trustee onboarding, and strategic organisational workflows, bringing clarity, rigour, and inclusion to everything she touched.
Her earlier career in the arts and heritage sector, including roles at The Photographers’ Gallery and Photoworks, gave her a deep appreciation for the power of creative communities to tell bold stories and drive meaningful change, values that translate directly into her passion for helping female founders find their voice and build visibility for their businesses.
Holding a BA (Hons) degree and an Executive PA Diploma, Hannah combines academic grounding with hands-on professional expertise, equipping her to support founders with calm, organised, people-centred coordination that makes a real difference throughout a programme.
In her role at AccelerateHER, Hannah is the connective tissue of programme delivery, coordinating sessions and communications, supporting mentors and founders, and ensuring that every participant has the right information and experience at every stage of their journey.