Lucy Martin

Lucy is also founder of Wimbledon Women in Business and co-author of the book Make It Your Business.

In her own words: “Despite girls being better students and higher achievers than boys at school, educated women end up with lower self-esteem and continue to find themselves on lower incomes than men and excluded from top jobs. I am passionate about showing women the alternative to compromising themselves to fit into what is still a man’s world, about empowering them to be everything they can be, about building new structures to support them and about breaking down the barriers that they come across.”

Lucy grew up in Belgium and Surrey and gained a first from Oxford University in French and Russian in 1989. A lawyer in the City for 10 years, she became disillusioned with her legal career - feeling she was working below her potential and held back by a glass ceiling. She left law not only to show what she knew she was capable of, but also to achieve the work-life balance and sense of real fulfilment that she craved.

When she set up Gina’s Nannies, Lucy was amazed at how little information and support was available for female business start-ups, and set up Wimbledon Women in Business (WWIB). Its immediate success (40 member businesses within 8 months and sister groups across the area) was further evidence that women had specific needs when it came to networking and business support that weren’t being met elsewhere. Through WWIB Lucy met coach Bella Mehta, and realising what a great demand there was for female-focused business support they got together to write Make It Your Business, which was published in 2006.

WWIB goes beyond supporting local women in business and plays an active role in encouraging girls at local schools to consider enterprise as a real career option.

Lucy has had other work published in newspapers, including the Times, the Telegraph and several magazines. Her latest project reflects her interest in childcare and entrepreneurship. Lucy believes that childcare is one of the greatest barriers to women who are thinking about setting up a business, as the majority of childcare duties usually lie with the mother. She argues that paying a nanny £40,000 is not feasible for most entrepreneurs, and that childcare costs hold many women back from taking their business to the next stage. She is currently pushing for childcare to be made tax-deductible, using her influence on the Small Business Forum which advises the government on policy affecting small businesses.