It’s time to cast your votes!
We have our finalists. Now let’s find our winners.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka accepting The FFinc Lifetime Achievement Award 2025
Thank you to all who submitted nominations over the past few weeks. We’ve been blown away by the response – and the calibre of every single nominee.
It’s not been easy. But after much careful consideration, taking into account the testimonials we’ve received and our own independent research, the finalists for The FFinc Awards 2026 have been selected. From here, we leave it to you to help us find our winners.
Please read through each category carefully before you make your decisions – and remember, the deadline is September 3rd and you cannot vote in categories for which you put forward nominations.
Happy voting!
A reminder of this year’s categories
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This award is for the woman who looked at the way things were done and decided to do them differently.
She may have reinvented herself, her industry, or both. She's shown extraordinary resilience — getting up, trying again, and building something worth building against the odds. Her story doesn't follow a straight line, and that's exactly what makes it worth telling.
We're looking for someone whose boldness has not only changed her own trajectory, but opened up new possibilities for the women watching her.
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For the female founder who amplifies others with power and purpose, celebrating brilliance wherever she sees it.
This is for the founder who has built a business and used that platform to lift others up. She advocates, mentors, opens doors, and makes noise on behalf of other women. Her business shows purpose as well as ambition – creating value not just commercially, but for the women in her orbit too.
We're looking for a founder with a track record of real achievement who has scaled with grit, navigated the hard parts, and brought others with her along the way.
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This award exists because progress for women doesn't happen in isolation.
The Best Ally is the man who has used his position and his platform to actively advance women – with real, demonstrable action. He has spoken up, hired, promoted, sponsored and championed women at every level.
We're looking for evidence of sustained commitment; a consistent pattern of behaviour that has made a measurable difference to the women around him and beyond.
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For the women who have changed what financial confidence looks like for other women — whether through education, example or sheer audacity.
They have used their platforms, their businesses and their own stories to close the financial knowledge gap, challenge the assumption that wealth is not women's territory and prove that money, managed well, is one of the most powerful forms of freedom a woman can have.
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For the business leader whose achievements have paved the way for others to rise behind her.
This is a woman who has used her success to open doors for others. She leads with vision and grit, and her impact stretches far beyond her own career. She may have broken into industries that weren't built for her, challenged structures that held women back, or simply refused to stop until the landscape around her had changed.
What sets her apart is not just what she's achieved, but what she's made possible for the women who came after her.
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This award is for a business or organisation that has done more than talk about gender equity – it has built it into the way it operates.
Through its hiring, its leadership, its products, its partnerships or its programmes, the results are measurable and the commitment is sustained.
We're looking for an organisation whose actions have moved the needle not just internally, but in its industry or community more broadly.
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For the next-gen powerhouse shaking up the system and shaping the future with brave ambition.
This award is for the woman who is early in her journey but already making an outsized impact. She may be building her first business, climbing fast in her career, or using her platform to challenge the status quo. Whatever she's doing, she's doing it with boldness and a clarity of purpose that sets her apart.
We're looking for someone whose trajectory makes it clear she's only just getting started.
THE DRIVING FORCE FINALISTS
Remarkable women leading remarkable businesses, and paving the way for others to follow.
Christine Nichols
Co-founder, Atlantic Pacific Logistics
Christine is the co-founder of one of the UK's most successful international shipping companies, built from nothing over 25 years.
In a sector still dominated by men, Chrissy became the first woman ever elected Chair of the London Freight Club in its 70-year history. In 2024 she received the King's Award for Enterprise in International Trade, and used her moment at Windsor Castle to speak directly to the King about women in transport and logistics. A true driving force in every sense, she is an active FFinc partner and Forward Faster Accelerator supporter, using her considerable platform to open doors for others.
Pamela Maynard, OBE
Chief AI Transformation Officer, Microsoft
The first-ever Chief AI Transformation Officer for Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions, Pamela previously led Avanade - a 60,000-person global technology juggernaut - as CEO, achieving 100% global gender pay equity and appointing the company's first-ever Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer. Named one of British Vogue's 25 Most Influential Women in the UK, BBBA Black British Business Person of the Year 2024 and recognised in the Powerlist Top 10. The first in her family to attend university, this formidable force has dedicated her career to closing the digital divide and ensuring women are seen and championed at the very top of technology.
Brenda Emmanus OBE
Broadcaster, the BBC
A broadcasting maven whose decades-long career at the BBC brought Black British culture into the mainstream of national arts coverage at a time when that required persistent advocacy against resistant structures. Her OBE recognises a body of work that changed what British audiences were shown - and whose stories were deemed worth telling. She has consistently used her national platform to champion women and open doors for the journalists and broadcasters who came behind her, demonstrating driving force through longevity, consistency and extraordinary impact.
Sasha Wiggins
CEO, Barclays Private Bank
CEO of Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management since 2024, and a member of the Group Executive Committee, Sasha is a 20-year Barclays stalwart who has risen through one of the world's most prominent financial institutions - from private banking to CEO of Barclays Ireland, Group Chief of Staff and Head of Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility.
Now Chair of the UK's new retail investment campaign, aimed at demystifying investing for 15 million British adults holding £610bn in cash savings - a role with direct and profound impact on women.
Christina Lawford
Founder & CEO, DiamondAir
Over 30 years ago, Christina pioneered a service category that didn't exist - luxury airport concierge - and built DiamondAir International into a juggernaut operating across 600+ destinations worldwide.
She mentors women entrepreneurs throughout her career, supports initiatives connecting women with jobs in travel, and was named Novi Female Entrepreneur of the Year 2026. She also drives AI-led innovation across her business, continuously pushing an industry she effectively created into its next chapter.
Julia Groves
Director, Sustainable Ventures
An absolute powerhouse of sustainable finance - and one of the best connected women in the UK.
Founding Chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association, co-founder of Trillion Fund, ESG Lead at Downing LLP (£1.7bn deployed) and MD of Sustainability at the British Business Bank. She also co-founded British Airways' digital presence. Across three decades, she has been the connective tissue between capital, policy and innovation - and has actively mentored and elevated the next generation of women in sustainable business along the way.
THE FEARLESS FOUNDER FINALISTS
Female founders who’ve taken their businesses to formidable heights and amplify others with power and purpose.
Anna Maxwell
Founder & CEO, Maxwellia
With over 30 years as a pharmacist, retail buyer and entrepreneur, Anna is the undisputed maven of medicine-switching - the ferociously complex regulatory process of converting prescription-only medicines into over-the-counter brands. She literally wrote the book on it (Switch Dynamics) and developed a 39-step methodology that is now the industry standard. Her flagship achievement is Lovima® - one of the first daily contraceptive pills available without prescription, stocked in 3,000+ pharmacies including Boots, Superdrug, Tesco and Asda, with 3x year-on-year revenue growth. She has raised over £13m in equity investment, and won Innovation Entrepreneur of the Year North West 2025.
Dame Mary Martin
Founder, Mary Martin London
A founding story unlike any other in this room. Dame Mary left the care system unable to read or write.
She taught herself in adult learning centres, graduated with honours in Fashion Textiles from the University of East London, and - with no formal industry background, no connections and no safety net - built Mary Martin London into an internationally recognised couture house. She received the Mercedes Benz Best African Designer Award in 2015 and the IAAA Fashion Icon Award in 2018, and became the first woman of colour to stage a fashion shoot inside the UK Foreign Office. Fearless, flamboyant, formidable.
Nicola Elliott
Founder, NEOM Wellbeing
Nicola launched NEOM in 2005 from four candles made on her kitchen table. Over 20 years she has grown it into an internationally recognised wellbeing brand stocked in 500+ stores across the globe, with her own retail locations and significant US expansion, attracting serious investment along the way. She built it without outside capital for years, navigating a difficult personal journey alongside the business, and speaks openly about the importance of women standing securely on their own financial footing. A trailblazing founder who created a market as much as she entered one - and who has used her platform consistently to inspire other women to back themselves.
Lucy Goff
Founder & CEO, LYMA
A force of nature who built one of the world's most remarkable WellTech companies from a hospital bed. After nearly dying from septicaemia following the birth of her daughter in 2012, Lucy remortgaged her house - after every investor said no - and launched LYMA from her kitchen table in 2018. She pioneered an entirely new category of evidence-based supplementation, created the first FDA-cleared clinic-grade laser for home use, and built an eight-figure business stocked worldwide and organically endorsed by the likes of Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow. King's Award for Enterprise 2023. Forbes 50 Over 50. A titan who turned her darkest moment into an industry-shifting empire.
Maya Raichoora
Mental Fitness Trainer, Nike
Nike's first-ever Mental Fitness Trainer, three-time TEDx speaker, and author of bestselling VISUALISE: Think, Feel, Perform Like the Top 1%. Maya built an entirely new category in performance coaching after using visualisation to overcome her own diagnosis of ulcerative colitis - turning a deeply personal crisis into a global methodology. Her clients include Nike, American Express, LEGO, Barclays and Asics. With 600k+ social followers and millions reached weekly, she is a magnificent amplifier of other women's potential - using her own vulnerability as both the curriculum and the invitation.
Ozoda Muminova
Founder & Director, The Good Insight
A woman of rare and formidable rigour. Ozoda walked away from senior roles at the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph and M&C Saatchi to found The Good Insight - a data consultancy built to serve values-led organisations who have historically had to choose between good intentions and commercial credibility. With degrees spanning applied mathematics, data science, economics and business, and 25+ years of strategic expertise, she gave her skills to the organisations that needed them most. Clients include the Guardian, Tortoise Media, Creative Equals, Great Place to Work and the DMA. She is the embodiment of the fearless founder who builds on her own terms.
THE GAME CHANGER FINALISTS
Women who looked at the way things were done and decided to do them differently.
Eniola Aluko MBE
Former England womens footballer
A qualified sports and entertainment lawyer who spent her playing career at the top of women's football - then changed the game by refusing to leave quietly. She was instrumental in exposing racism and discrimination within the England coaching setup at a time when those allegations were officially denied, leading to institutional change and a National Football Museum Hall of Fame induction. She then became the first Sporting Director at Angel City FC with equity ownership in the club - turning herself from employee into owner - and is now an investor at Mercury/13 deploying capital into women's football. She altered the institution itself.
Jenny Halpern Prince MBE
Founder, Halpern
The founder of Halpern, one of the UK's most respected communications agencies, and the Co-Founder and Chair of The Lady Garden Foundation - the charity dedicated to raising awareness and improving outcomes for women with gynaecological cancers. Jenny changed the conversation around one of the most underfunded and undertalked-about areas of women's health, using her commercial skills, her formidable network and her personal courage to put it squarely on the national agenda. She is nominated as a Game Changer for building two significant organisations - and for the audacity with which she has dismantled taboo in service of women's lives.
Katie White
Co-Founder, Enough
Katie looked at the way survivors of sexual violence were expected to access help - fragmented, inaccessible, often retraumatising - and decided it wasn't good enough. She built Enough: a platform combining technology, research and lived experience to fundamentally rethink how people navigate support, bringing together clinicians, researchers and survivors to build something the sector had never seen. In doing so she has changed not only how individuals access help, but how organisations think about prevention, education and response to sexual violence. One of the most purposeful and courageous founders in this category.
Leanne Pero MBE
CEO, Black Women Rising
Leanne founded her first company at 15. At 30 she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. Rather than retreating, she founded Black Women Rising - addressing the catastrophic absence of culturally appropriate cancer support for Black and brown women in the UK. She changed the conversation not just through advocacy, but through the force of her own story - appearing across the BBC and Premier Christian Communications, working with pharmaceutical companies on health inequalities, and raising over £1m through her Foundation. MBE 2023. Pride of Britain Award. Churchill Fellowship. She looked at a broken system, and rebuilt part of it herself.
Rachel Eccleston
MD Group AI, Sky
Rachel leads one of the most significant transformation programmes at one of Europe's largest media companies. With a background in corporate law and management consulting, and over 20 years of international experience across media, luxury and the arts, she occupies a job title that barely existed three years ago - and is shaping how one of Britain's most loved broadcasters navigates the most significant technological shift of a generation. She is a game changer by virtue of her position at the intersection of AI and media - and what she builds there will set the standard for an industry.
Sue Riddlestone OBE
Chief Executive, Bioregional
A sustainability titan whose 30-year body of work has changed the physical fabric of the world. She co-created BedZED, the UK's first large-scale eco-village, and developed One Planet Living - now embedded in over $30 billion of real estate development worldwide. She authored the paper that became UK government zero carbon homes policy in 2006, and spent five years in UN processes as the official NGO global focal point for Sustainable Consumption and Production, securing its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals. An OBE, Skoll Award holder and Ashoka Fellow who has changed not just her industry but the planet's trajectory - with women and communities at the heart of everything she does.
THE FINANCIALLY FEARLESS FINALISTS
Women who have changed the way we think about money, either by way of financial education or by inspiring others through their own financial fearlessness.
Ayesha Ofori
Founder & CEO, Propelle
A former Goldman Sachs Executive Director who spent six years managing over £500m in client assets for ultra-high-net-worth individuals - then walked away to solve the UK's gender investment gap. She founded Propelle, the UK's first female-focused investment platform, as well as the successful Femme & Fortune Podcast, after recognising that the investment world she had built her career in primarily benefited the already wealthy and predominantly male. Propelle has raised over £1.2m in pre-seed funding (backed by Google, Goldman Sachs alumni and Barclays), supported 300+ women through McKinsey and Google partnerships, and extended financial education to 30,000 users.
Betina Skovbro
Founder, The Danish Bakery
A quietly formidable business builder who has grown The Danish Bakery from a single rented unit into four units employing approximately 30 staff through a series of financially courageous decisions - most notably investing significantly in her own premises and a state-of-the-art bakery when the safer path was available. She also tackled one of the food sector's most stubborn structural problems - the decline of trained artisan bakers - by building a training academy that creates pathways to financial independence for others. She understands that financial fearlessness is not just about growing her own business, but about using it to empower the people around her.
Fiona Hyde
Head of Sustainability, Santander UK
Fiona is responsible for embedding environmental and social responsibility into how billions of pounds are deployed, invested and lent. She holds Fellowship of the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Practitioners (FISEP) and is a Chartered Environmentalist, having built sustainability functions from the ground up at both TSB and Santander.
She is nominated as a Finfluencer not through content but through institutional impact - reshaping how a major financial institution approaches its responsibilities at a scale most individuals could never reach.
Joy David
Creator, Wealth From Scratch
Joy built Wealth from Scratch from a humble background, using her own journey toward financial security as both the content and the curriculum. Through her growing platform she shares financial information in genuinely accessible, jargon-free language - covering money mindset, budgeting and investing in ways that reach the people mainstream financial education consistently fails. She documents her own wealth-building in real time, creating a sense of shared journey that resonates with followers who see themselves reflected in her story rather than being lectured at from a position of established wealth. Her authenticity is her greatest asset and her greatest gift.
Sophie Hallwright
Co-Founder, The Curve (podcast)
Sophie is one of the voices of The Curve - an award-winning investing and financial education platform that has surpassed 3 million podcast downloads and built one of the largest female investing communities in the world. Sophie came to finance not as an expert but as a curious outsider - a former TV producer who asked the questions that millions of women were too intimidated to ask, and built a platform around the answers. What began as a conversation between two friends has grown into a global movement spanning the UK, Australia and New Zealand, raising $1m in funding and changing the way a generation of women think about building wealth. She changed the conversation by refusing to pretend she already knew the answers.
THE RISING STAR FINALISTS
Next-gen powerhouses shaking up the system and shaping the future with brave ambition.
Catherine Wiggins
Head of FP&A, Boots
Rising fast through the finance function at Boots and Boots Opticians - one of the UK's most iconic retail brands - Catherine was recently promoted and is already known as a brilliant boss to her direct reports. Ambitious, competent and generous with her time, she has simultaneously taken on her first trusteeship at The Rory Peck Trust, a charity supporting freelance journalists working in hostile environments. She is the kind of rising star who doesn't wait for permission - she just gets on with it, and brings others along with her. One to watch, in every sense.
Ellie Louise
Founder, Recondition
Building an adaptive fashion brand from scratch is hard enough. Doing it in a sector that has historically marginalised the very people it claims to dress is another level. Ellie Louise has been doing both - creating inclusive clothing and staging some of the most joyful, diverse fashion shows in Manchester - and doing it through what her nominator describes as a journey that hasn't always been smooth sailing. She recently secured a partnership with Schuh, a significant milestone for an early-stage brand. Inclusive, hard-working and resilient - she is rising quickly, and the industry is starting to notice.
Kate Hawker
Co-Founder, adventuro
Kate co-founded adventuro in April 2023 after a career defined by service: four years teaching Modern Foreign Languages through Teach First's Leadership Development Programme, volunteering with YMCA Bogotá in Colombia and teaching in the Galápagos Islands, and nearly four years supporting young people through the NSPCC's ChildLine Schools Service. She holds a First Class Honours in Modern Languages and a Master's in Educational Leadership. Multilingual, purpose-driven and operationally sharp, Kate brings an unusually rich foundation to her entrepreneurial journey - and a commitment to building something that matters as well as scales.
Khayala Eylazova
COO – EMEA Consulting Operations Transformation, PwC UK
After progressing at speed through Microsoft, Khayala is now Commercial Director for EMEA at PwC's insurance line of service - one of the world's largest professional services firms. She holds an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School, is fluent in five languages, and has been an integral part of UN Women UK. Not content with blazing her own trail, she continues to actively support the institution and communities that shaped her. Her nominator describes her simply as a force of nature - and the trajectory bears that out entirely. She is what the next generation of women in professional services looks like.
Maria Gonzalez
Business Manager to AXA UK&I CEO
Maria is the driving force behind the AXA UK CEO Office, where she manages complex priorities for one of the UK's largest insurance organisations with professionalism, foresight and relentless commitment to excellence. Her nominator describes her as the trusted go-to person for colleagues at every level of the business. Beyond her day-to-day role, she relaunched AXA UK's women's network and was nominated by the CEO herself to lead their London head office - a significant mark of institutional trust at an early stage in her career. She is rising not by pushing others aside, but by pulling everyone upward with her.
Sophie Pender
Founder, The 93% Club
Founded The 93% Club at 19 while studying at the University of Bristol, after noticing the gap between state-school students and peers who arrived with stronger professional networks and social capital. Growing up on a council estate in North London as the first in her family to attend university, she had felt that gap firsthand. What began as a student initiative has grown into a national movement. She left corporate law to scale it full-time, has been named Forbes 30 Under 30, received a Diana Award, and delivered the final interview on Amol Rajan's podcast Radical. A book is forthcoming. She is one of the defining voices on social mobility of her generation - and she is only just beginning.
THE BEST ALLY FINALISTS
Men who have used their voice, their privilege and their influence to champion women (without being asked).
Ashley Nichols
Chairman, Atlantic Pacific Global Logistics
Ashley built one of the UK's most successful international shipping companies over 25 years alongside his wife and business partner Chrissy Nichols. Throughout that journey, Ashley has been a consistent and genuine champion of Chrissy's leadership, including her groundbreaking election as the first female Chair of the London Freight Club in its 70-year history. In an industry still overwhelmingly led by men, his allyship is not performative — it shows up in the day-to-day reality of running a business as genuine equals, and in his support of FFinc and the Forward Faster Accelerator. He is nominated for the way he has quietly, consistently used his position to amplify the women around him.
James Timpson OBE
Ex-Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending
James has spent over two decades arguing publicly that prison is a "disaster" for women in particular. He ran Timpson training academies inside two women's prisons, giving female prisoners industry qualifications and a guaranteed job offer on release. As Prisons Minister he chaired the new Women's Justice Board, specifically tasked with reducing the number of women sent to prison and ensuring their children were not collateral damage in the process. His commitment to women in the criminal justice system is structural, sustained and backed by his own money and institutions.
Nick Myers
Chief Strategy Officer, OLIVER
Nick leads the Black Talent element of the DMA (Data and Marketing Association) alongside his senior role at OLIVER — one of the UK's most innovative marketing agencies. What makes his allyship structurally significant is the combination: he holds responsibility for representation within one of the industry's central trade bodies, meaning his decisions reach across the whole sector rather than within a single agency. He pushes consistently for equality without being asked, does excellent work at agency level, and goes further still on a personal level — encouraging, supporting and investing emotionally in the founders and emerging talent he backs, particularly women. That sustained, unglamorous commitment sustains people through the stretches where recognition and revenue are both absent.
Rahul Gumber
Chief Risk Officer, AXA UK&I
Executive Sponsor for Inclusion and Diversity at AXA UK — one of the UK's largest insurance companies — at a time when many organisations were quietly scaling back their diversity commitments, Rahul relaunched and revitalised AXA UK's entire I&D strategy with fresh energy and genuine conviction. He is a passionate advocate for AXA's Women's Network, has championed initiatives supporting the development and progression of women across the business, and his commitment extends across ethnicity, sexual orientation and every underrepresented group. By using his seniority to challenge the status quo and amplify the voices of others, he has helped build a culture where people feel genuinely valued — not just included on paper.
Simon Comins
COO, Superdrug
After 35 years at Superdrug - rising to Chief Operating Officer of a retailer with 18,500 colleagues - Simon has led an organisation that has embedded genuine inclusion into its operational DNA rather than its marketing copy. Superdrug's "Where You Can Be You" campaign is the public expression of a culture built deliberately from the inside out, communicating to every colleague and customer that all identities are welcomed and celebrated. Under his leadership, Superdrug has become one of the UK's most recognisably inclusive employers. He is nominated as a Best Ally for the sustained, structural work of making one of Britain's most loved high street brands a genuinely safe and welcoming place for women and all.
Ved Sen
Head of Innovation for UK and Ireland at Tata Consultancy Services
With over 20 years of experience across emerging technology, design and business, Ved is one of the most generous connectors in his field. He’s nominated as a Best Ally for the way he uses his seniority, his network and his genuine warmth to open doors for women founders and leaders across the UK tech and innovation ecosystem. At TCS — one of the world's largest employers of women in technology — he brings the company's deep commitment to inclusion to life through individual acts of allyship that are as consistent as they are consequential. He is the kind of ally who does it because he means it, not because it's on the agenda.
THE FAST FORWARD FINALISTS
Organisations that are moving women forward at scale, through their products, their programmes and the way they operate.
McLaren Racing
In 2023 McLaren Racing launched 60 Scholars — an all-female STEM programme — and simultaneously launched its first returnship scheme to support women getting back into technology and engineering. Both programmes have since evolved into NEXT, an annual five-day immersive experience for 25 exceptional young women in STEM from the UK, US and EU, run in partnership with Allwyn, Cisco and Schneider Electric. McLaren has also doubled down on its Driver Development Programme, backing two female drivers in the F1 Academy all-female series for 2026. The McLaren Racing Engage alliance — the first of its kind in F1 — unites the Women's Engineering Society, EqualEngineers, The Smallpeice Trust and Creative Access to diversify talent in motorsport at every level. In one of the most male-dominated industries in the world, McLaren is building the infrastructure for women to enter, advance and stay.
Nobody’s Child
Founded in 2015, Nobody's Child is a British womenswear brand on a mission to make affordable, responsible fashion accessible to all women — growing from a 2015 startup into a £26m sustainable fashion business that convinced M&S to take a 25% stake. Almost all of its production uses responsible materials, with 51.4% of clothing in FY24 being monomaterial and circular business models — repair, rental and resale — built into its operating model. The brand is led by female CEO Jody Plows and is a certified B Corp. It is nominated for the Fast Forward Award for proving that affordable fashion and genuine sustainability are not mutually exclusive — and that a brand built for women can also be built responsibly, transparently and with the supply chain accountability that women increasingly demand.
Sky
By age 11, nearly one in three girls stop believing sport is for them. Sky has decided that is unacceptable — and put serious resource behind changing it. Sky partnered with England and Arsenal forward Alessia Russo and UK charity Goals 4 Girls to launch The Alessia Cup, a nationwide tournament creating grassroots football opportunities for teenage girls from underserved backgrounds, while calling on government to introduce targeted tax relief on the production of women's sport. Sky is the home of women's sport in the UK, investing more than ever in rights and broadcasting nearly 80% of all televised women's sport coverage in 2025, with viewing of women's sport on Sky increasing by 25% in the same year. They also supported Judy Murray's Learn to Lead initiative, equipping girls in Scottish primary schools to design and run their own sports clubs. They are moving the needle — at scale, with money behind it.
Superdrug
Superdrug has been one of the most consistent and practical champions of women's health and wellbeing on the British high street. When the government abolished the tampon tax in 2021, Superdrug was one of the few pharmacy chains to immediately cut the price of period products by 5%, passing the saving directly to customers — while most retailers quietly pocketed it. They work closely with hygiene poverty charity Beauty Banks, offering donation points across 100+ stores. They run a "My First Period" campaign destigmatising menstruation for young girls. Their "Where You Can Be You" campaign has embedded genuine inclusion into everything they do — communicating to every colleague and customer that all identities are welcomed and celebrated. As a business, Superdrug is Fast Forward because it uses its position on every high street in the UK to make women's health more accessible, affordable and less shameful.
We Are Luna
We Are Luna is building the world's first AI-driven digital health companion for teens, on a mission to create a more informed and educated Gen Z, breaking the taboos around teen health and closing the education gap so that female-assigned teens can feel empowered to make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing as they move into adulthood. Available on both iOS and Android, Luna launched in November 2022 and is specifically focused on the moment when girls are most at risk of disengagement — adolescence — using technology to give them the health education that schools and parents consistently fall short on. As part of Luna's mission to help girls live happier and healthier lives, the company is also passionate about encouraging girls to continue playing sport throughout adolescence — one of the most well-evidenced ways to protect their mental health. They are fast-forwarding the future of female health, one teenage girl at a time.
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