Escaping Lockdown Episode 2: Elizabeth Pirrie

Escaping Lockdown with Professor J. Ignacio Canales

In this episode, Elizabeth discusses the biggest challenge she and her colleagues at Investing Women have faced since lockdown which was organising a virtual event to celebrate the AccelerateHER Awards finals.

Initially, the awards were to take place on March 26th in Edinburgh with an estimated 100 guests and 12 finalists to pitch their business ideas to 3 judges. However, 10 days before the event the decision was made from the venue hosting the awards to cancel due to lockdown.

Due to the amount of work and dedication that went into planning the awards from both the organisers and the finalists, in a small team of 4, Elizabeth and her colleagues decided to change the event to a virtual one.

In a very short time frame and with no previous experience in live-streaming events, Elizabeth and the team at Investing Women ran the awards ceremony live via Youtube with over 500 viewers joining in.

The event was incredibly successful with the finalists pitching to the judges virtually and 4 winners being chosen on the day. After the event, some of the finalists have since had enquiries from investors from London who normally wouldn’t have been able to attend the event in person but had the opportunity to watch virtually.

Four of the finalists have also since the event in March been awarded additional funding from Innovate UK for Covid-19 related projects.