Meet the Advisory Board – Chelsea Boothroyd, NEXUS
Chelsea Boothroyd is one of our valued advisory board at FinTech North. She recently took the time to give us a brief introduction about herself and her role at both FinTech North and Nexus.
The full interview was recorded for the benefit of our community. To watch, simply click the image below.
Tell us about yourself!
“I am based at Nexus, which is a part of the University of Leeds, we are all about democratising the access to research and innovations for businesses. We work with everyone from start-ups, to entrepreneurs to larger corporates that are concentrating on research and development. We are all about making sure we understand their product roadmap and innovation journey so that we can connect to the skills and expertise at the University.”
“I am a FinTech ambassador and have been involved in it for quite a few years now after moving back home to Yorkshire. I worked in London for JP Morgan and was in their FinTech team; we worked on FinTech strategy but also saw hundreds of FinTech businesses in the capital market space including Investment banking and sales and trading.”
“I’m very passionate about FinTech and our region. So, bringing those two together through FinTech North is amazing.”
What do you think about FinTech North?
“FinTech North was a home from home! I think as a community, it is a fantastic landing space. If you’re from the region and you’re trying to understand the type of support, you have available to you or you are new and thinking about how to land – what better place to connect than FinTech North? Where you can walk in the door, be greeted by lots of smiley faces, but get tangible help. You’re finding people that share your passion and energy but can also help you on your journey. We are very excited to see what we can do over the next few months!”
What do you hope we’ll be able to achieve together over the next year?
“I think what we want to do is more! We’re looking at sustainability, scaling, supporting more businesses and looking at ways in which we can support our community. I think that’s the priority in terms of thinking forward and how we do that. WE have a lot of momentum in the sector and in the north, the fusion of those two things means we have a real opportunity to really take that forward.”
“The patchwork of regions and what we all specialise in is really important and the more we can fuse that together across the regional fabric, the better. That’s where we are able to be a sorting hat for businesses and point them in the right direction as well as building a community that leverages the strength of those component parts.”
What do you see as the main opportunities for FinTech North but also FinTech in the North?
“The businesses that were always going to do well are those at the frontier of what they’re doing. FinTech can be quite a repetitive field with a lot of concentration in certain areas, so the businesses at the forefront of technology, those solving that new challenge or solving an existing challenge but in that new, innovative way, are always going to receive traction.”
“Quite often, they would be linked to academia or experts, they’d be leveraging and standing on the shoulders of giants. I’m passionate about thinking of how we can continue this journey of democratising that type of support and how we are making sure that we understand the landscape and breaking down those barriers – so whatever it might be that you need to tap in to grow, we can navigate businesses and our community as well as ensuring they are accessing the top support to get them on that frontier.”
A big thank you to Chelsea and NEXUS for their continued support to FinTech North. To find out more about NEXUS, click here.
Additionally, for the full advisory board, click here.
