IRENE GRAHAM OBE

Founding CEO and Board Director, ScaleUp Institute

She is a former senior banker at Standard Chartered where she held both European and global managing director roles. She set up, ran and scaled several of the bank’s key client and product businesses across its corporate and institutional bank and led several global M&A activities.

During that time at the height of the financial crisis was seconded to work across the banking industry where she lead the Business Finance Taskforce and Better Business Finance which was responsible for, amongst other initiatives, the founding of the Business Growth Fund, SME Finance Monitor, and leading on developments
in Open Banking, and the Small Business Act.

She is a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University and holds a variety of non executive director and advisory roles across the creative, business and finance communities.