Meet our Mentors

Our fabulous mentors have a wealth of experience from a range of industries and professional backgrounds. Thanks to our awesome partners we are able to offer one-to-one and in-depth investor readiness mentoring to female founders.

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Who they are

Evelyn Simpson

Jackie Waring

Rhona Campbell

Evelyn Simpson is a coach, mentor and advisor. She works with early stage companies and entrepreneurs helping them to develop strategy, raise fund and improve their leadership effectiveness. Evelyn is also an active angel investor and serves on the board of the Investing Women Angels syndicate. She is an entrepreneur in her own right having co-founded her own coaching and training firm. A former investment banker, Evelyn worked for JP Morgan Chase executing a wide range of corporate finance transactions around the world and latterly was COO and board member for Chase Manhattan Asia Limited in Hong Kong. Evelyn chairs accessibility tech start-up, Neatebox and chairs the Board of Trustees of Venture Scotland. She has a BA in Economics and Law from Edinburgh University and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York.

Jackie is a pioneer of women angels ‘changing the face of angel investing’; bringing more women angels into Scotland’s dynamic angel investment community. An active and experienced angel investor herself; she established and leads Scotland’s all-female angel group Investing Women Angels whose members have invested over 80% of their funds in highly innovative female founded/co-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. Publicly recognised by Scotland’s First Minister; she is a major player in shaping the ScotCanDo eco-system.

Rhona Campbell is an expert in global product management and product marketing, with over 20 years’ experience working with SMEs and multinational technology companies at a senior level to achieve growth and success in global markets. Her practical know-how has helped companies to commercialise and launch new products, enter new markets as well as develop and implement international product and marketing strategies. Rhona set up her own consultancy, Rhona Campbell Associates, working with start-up and investor-funded technology companies to assess commercial feasibility of new products, formulate product strategy/roadmap and take leading-edge technology to market.

Elizabeth Pirrie

Elizabeth Pirrie works alongside CEO Jackie Waring to develop the strategic direction for AccelerateHER. Elizabeth brings with her over 20 years of accounting experience including 10 as Finance Director of what was one of Scotland’s largest, independent care home providers. For the past six years she has worked in economic development in Scotland supporting start up and growing companies across several sectors including life sciences, technology and tourism.

Elaine Galston

Elaine is a passionate advocate for creative innovation and start-ups, especially female and STEM based companies. She is currently driving forward her own start up company focused on creating an infrastructure for reusable sanitary wear and normalising and destigmatising incontinence and periods.
Elaine is actively involved with the AccelerateHER programme helping female founded companies with their pitching and business rationales. She is a very proud and active member of the female Angel group, Investing Women Angels through whom Barclays Bank and Scottish Enterprise support her to mentor females with high potential and advise on financial strategies.