left school and worked in an office in London. She chose the firm because it was within five minutes walking distance of Liverpool Street Station! Possessing the talent and temperament of an entrepreneur she would later start and manage Nighthawk Electronics, which became a world leader in computer resource-sharing devices. She didn’t really set out to be an entrepreneur – her trigger came when she was interviewed for a book about childhood behaviours, when it became apparent she was an entrepreneur in waiting. She is ‘one of the few women to be successful in the field of computing and electronics’. She has sold the business but remains busy. She is a leading speaker on women in business – she is a champion for women starting out on their own as well as for women executives in larger, established businesses. As well as being on the boards of several other entrepreneurial businesses she is an active supporter of the Prince’s Youth Business Trust in Essex.

The need for innovation

I found when I came into the electronics industry, I would design a product and then you’d find half of the others would just buy your product and reverse engineer it, but of course what they don’t realise, it’s the old thing of keeping up with the Jones’s.  You can never keep up with the Jones’s.  That’s why you mustn’t look at other people, you have to be your own thinker and your own leader because if you think of it, when the Jones’s copy, you’ve already moved on again.