Sam Smith was the first female chief executive of a City stock­broking firm and has worked on over 200 transactions, IPOs and secondary fund raisings. She established finnCap in 2007 after orchestrating the management buyout of a small broking division of J M Finn & Co Limited, a private client stockbroking firm. Under her leader­ship finnCap became a leading advisory firm for the business of tomorrow, floating on the Stock Exchange in 2018 and just last month, it completed a merger to become Cavendish, marking an exciting new chapter in its growth.

Sam is now an adviser to scale-up businesses and to social enterprises who support entrepreneurialism in the UK. She champions investment for under-represented groups including female-led businesses; the empowerment of young people from all backgrounds and the integration of entrepreneurialism into the school curriculum. She is part of the Government Taskforce on Women-Led High Growth Enterprises, on the advisory board for Everywoman, the University of Bristol, a Non Executive Director of Sumer Group Ltd and Solid State plc, 55 Redefined and Griffin Markets Ltd and Patron to The Entrepreneurs Network.  She has won many business awards and is the author of The Secret Sauce: superscale your business and empower your talent with empathetic leadership, published earlier this year by Rethink Press.