As part of our coverage of International Women's Day, we take a look at some of the women from across the UK who are making their mark in business.
Our 22-strong list for 2022 showcases women from England, Scotland and Wales who have found success - whether making high-end chocolate bars or leading the space race.
Every woman who achieves their goals is one more good example set to other women and girls coming up behind them.
BusinessLive is running a series of articles to mark this year's event - check out BusinessLive's 22 Top Women in Business feature and our profiles of all 18 women leading businesses in the FTSE 350.
Samantha Brückner
The Plymouth businesswoman worked as a waitress for several years before founding Toddlekind in 2018. It is now selling playmats and other accessories for new mums and dads in 46 countries and has broken into the US market.
The baby products company, favoured by Pippa Middleton and other celebrities, has already generated 7million euros in revenue and is now looking to double the 4million euro turnover it made in 2021.
Toddlekind is a provider of Scandi-inspired playmats and interior accessories. The mats are free from chemicals such as BPA, formaldehyde, phthalates, heavy metals and latex.
Samantha has diversified the product range from playmats to clean wean mats, storage baskets and a range of accessories for babies and toddlers.
The products are sold worldwide with retailers including Natural Baby Shower and Scandiborn with major new department and online stores to be announced soon.
Lucy Cohen and Sophie Hughes
At 23, Lucy Cohen saw a gap in the market for a low cost, subscription-based accountancy service. Customers would send her their information in a purple envelope.
Lucy told Sophie Hughes, a former school friend and another newly qualified accountant, about her idea and she was onboard.
Fifteen years later and the Bridgend-based Mazuma is no longer just the purple envelopes, it has its own app, online platform and proprietary technology that is specially designed for Mazuma’s market.
By 2023 they are forecast to have over 10,000 subscribers as well as an extensive reach across the industry.
Chen Mao Davies
The breastfeeding support app developed by Gloucestershire-based Oscar and Bafta-winning entrepreneur Dr Chen Mao Davies is being trialled by the NHS.
The computer graphics and animation expert, who was part of the visual effects team for films such as Gravity and Blade Runner 2049 , founded femtech company LatchAid after facing her own struggles with breastfeeding.
The app uses interactive 3D animations, artificial intelligence, virtual peer support groups and live healthcare specialists to assist women who are having problems getting their baby to latch.
The platform will be prescribed by the NHS as part of a pilot project across South Devon and Torbay, Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, as well as Lancashire and South Cumbria.
Kameese Davis
Kameese Davis is the brains behind Nylah's Naturals - a range of haircare products for those with afro or textured hair which is inspired by and named after her daughter.
The 39-year-old started investigating the market after struggling to find suitable hair care products for her young daughter who suffered from eczema.
Since her appearance on Dragons' Den last year, Kameese has secured a listing with high street giant Superdrug and is in talks with other retailers.
Joelle Drummond and Sarah McNena
Founded in Mumbles in 2019, Drop Bear Beer Co. wanted to ‘disrupt’ the traditional view of the non-alcoholic beer market.
The brand, which was started by Sarah McNena from Melbourne and Swansea-native Joelle Drummond, produces 100% natural beverages that are below 0.5% ABV, vegan-friendly, low calorie, low sugar and additive-free.
The pair are now working towards opening the world’s first carbon neutral alcohol-free brewery in South Wales towards the end of this year having secured a £1.9m equity investment - including £1.5m from former chief executive of FTSE 100 Admiral, Henry Engelhardt.
Teri Ellington
Teri, of Ingleby Barwick, started out with just a laptop and £80 in cash and slept on the sofa for six months. Three years on and the 25-year-old is a successful jewellery entrepreneur and owner of Elllington Timepiece. Her designer watches sell all over the world, and the young entrepreneur also speaks openly about the crippling anxiety and agoraphobia that kept her housebound for months.
As well as growing the business, buying out investors two years early, she helped to inspire youngsters in New York.
Alice and Maisie Jones
Started by two sisters in their garden shed in North Wales, Sisters & Seekers has become a multi-million pound online fashion brand.
Alice and Maise Jones started Sisters & Seekers in Hope, Flintshire in 2017.
Today the company employs 15 staff and last year achieved a turnover of £3m with a business model that challenges the fast fashion industry.
Although their success has come online, they opened their first physical pop-up store in Chester earlier this year.
Backed by powerful social media campaigns and celebrities the firm is tipped for more success next year.
Ricki Lawal
Ricki Lawal started making candles in 2020 in a bid to “boost her wellbeing” during the pandemic, using jars she had at home, natural wax, aromatic essential oils and wooden wicks.
The 28-year-old's company, Selfmade Candle, is based in South London and focuses on sustainability and uses vegan-friendly materials.
Last year, Ms Lawal land £5,000 in funding after entering a business competition being run by dating app Bumble. She used the cash injection to host her first pop-up store - something, she said, was always “a dream” and “filled her with joy”.
Ms Lawal, who said she is a “big believer” in zero waste encourages people who buy her candles to reuse the jar after the candle has burned by planting herbs or small flowers.
She is now planning to launch more physical pop-up stores in 2022 as well as continuing to grow her online presence.
Melanie Marsden
Melanie Marsden is the co-founder and co-owner of Lounge Underwear.
She launched the business in 2015 from her own lounge in Worcestershire with her now husband Daniel and since when it has grown rapidly, tapping into the Instagram generation to boost their global profile.
The company brands itself as 'comfort made sexy' and is now based in a £3 million head office in Solihull.
Josie Morris MBE
Josie Morris is the managing director of sustainable packaging company Woolcool, based in Stone, Staffs.
She joined the business in 2014 in the sales and marketing department and today leads the company's 50-strong workforce which produces sustainable temperature-controlled packaging for the food, pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.
Alongside her role at Woolcool, Josie is a member of the Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce Council, an Export Champion for Midlands Engine and a board member for the Bio-based Biodegradable Industries Association.
Last year, Josie was awarded an MBE for her services to manufacturing and the environment.
Ismay Mummery
Ismay Mummery founded sustainable boys fashion brand Boy Wonder in 2016.
Ismay's clothes range has sustainability at its heart, using organic cotton, chemical free prints and repair kits and care guides to give shoppers the tools to care for their purchases.
She has also launched a take back and resell scheme through her web shop, committed to an annual production limit and will be stocking limited edition, customized, second-hand garments in the spring.
She was inspired by her son Dylan, who is now 11, when she had trouble finding brightly coloured but sustainable clothes for him. The business is based in her home town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Helen Parker
Helen Parker is the creative director of deVOL kitchens, based in the historic Cotes Mill, just outside Loughborough.
She has played a key part in building deVOL up to a £20 million turnover business – with the US worth a further £3 million – providing work for 250 people and with plans for further big expansion in Loughborough.
As well as its Leicestershire bases, this company now has a shop in the fashionable No-Ho district in New York's Manhattan, along with two showrooms in London's trendy Clerkenwell.
Helen and her team are currently starring in a fly-on-the-wall series about the business called For the Love of Kitchens, showing on the Discovery channel in both the USA and UK.
Hazel McShane and Amber Probyn
The Bristol graduates, who invented a women’s urinal, recently raised a quarter of a million pounds in their first fundraise from investors including the co-founder of Monzo Bank.
Amber Probyn, 23, and Hazel McShane, 25, the founders of Peequal, say their flatpack portable urinals are six times faster to use and produce 98% less carbon than traditional portable toilets.
The duo came up with the initial design while studying at the University of Bristol and the idea won them £15,000 from the institution’s start-up competition. Since graduating in 2021 they have toured UK festivals, gaining user feedback and tweaking their product.
The pair are hoping their urinals, which are made of recycled sea plastics, will become a common sight at British festivals and events, with 250 units currently under construction and several deals being signed with large-scale festival operators.
Rachel Pendered
The co-founder and managing director of London creative agency Media Zoo has taken the business from start-up in to one of the fastest-growing agencies in the country with more than 100 people across five sites in London, Glasgow and Zurich.
A former TV producer on shows including Watchdog, she took her first steps in business at a mum's club called Cupcake run by Karen Pepper, who went on to become chief of staff at Amazon.
Media Zoo has gone on to win more than 200 creative industry awards, including 'The Grand' at the Cannes Grand Prix, and is a New York Film Festival Winner and a Sunday Times Fast Track top 100 fastest growing company in Britain.
Rachel has held a number of senior positions within the film industry and was awarded The Natwest Female Entrepreneur of the Year and Management Today’s Entrepreneur of the Year in both 2020 and 2021.
Rachel was also voted a Rising Star in the business world by LDC and in 2020 was named by The Telegraph as one of Britain's Top 50 most ambitious business leaders.
Tiffany Thorn
Tiffany Thorn is the founder and chief executive of one of Wales’ leading biotech firms, BiVictriX Therapeutics.
The St Asaph-based business develops next-generation cancer therapies and Tiffany has led it through key project milestones and secured £2.3m in investment.
A registered clinical immunologist, Tiffany was awarded chief scientific officer’s ‘rising star’ award for her commitment to the delivery of healthcare.
In 2021, the firm successfully floated on London's Alternative Investment Market raising £7.5m to support expansion. The float saw Tiffany become one of the youngest female bosses of a UK-based publicly listed technology company at the age of 33.
Melissa Thorpe
Thorpe is credited with leading the Cornwall space race as the Chief Executive of Spaceport Cornwall.
Appointed in 2021, she heads up an organisation with huge ambitions.
From satellite assembly, design and programming, to manufacturing or big data analysis, Spaceport Cornwall’s aim is to create 150 jobs by 2025 and another 240 in the supply chain. The public sector organisation believes the spaceport facility could generate £250m into Cornwall’s economy. Already it has helped generate more than £2m in research and development in the space, aerospace and data sectors in the Duchy.
Read more: Our big interview with Melissa Thorpe
Thorpe grew up in British Columbia and on Vancouver Island where her dad was a firefighter plane pilot.
An economist with a master's degree from the London School of Economics, she has been with the company since it was established in 2014.
She first took the title of Head of Engagement for the Spaceport Cornwall project, fulfilling the duties of head of marketing and outreach and business development.
Steffi Smith
Steffi launched quirky confectioners The Chocolate Smiths with a former business partner seven years ago, after deciding to go it alone when they were made redundant from a chocolate shop in Northumberland just two days before Christmas in 2013. She initially sold the firm’s Bizarre-branded handmade chocolate bars at Tynemouth Market, but recently expanded for a second time into a huge North Shields unit, after seeing sales rocket on the back of support from fitness guru Joe Wicks. Steffi stars in all the firm’s social media videos to promote the brand, to great effect, with products – packaged in Victorian-style wrapping, with flavours like nana’s biscuit tin and caramel apple pie – selling out soon after going on sale on the firm’s site.
Helen Wilson
North East diver turned environmental entrepreneur Helen Wilson launched recycling business with a difference The Bottle Swap during lockdown.
Based on the traditional milk round, the company operates a refill delivery service providing plastic-free, eco-friendly cleaning and personal care products to customers across the North East.
Helen designed all the branding, built the bottleswap.com website and makes deliveries herself, splitting the region to cover all NE, SR and DH postcode areas, having a “round” in each area once a week.
Charlotte and Sophie Wilson
Sisters Charlotte, 34, and Sophie, 27, set up women’s activewear brand YANA last year. Despite the cancellation of events during the pandemic, the sisters, born in Skelton, North Yorkshire and now living in Newcastle, have tackled the downturn head on with their company YANA, creating high-quality activewear that “can be worn to work out or relax in”.
The pair - who also run a property development venture - received backing from high street giant John Lewis, selling their clothes in pop-up shops in Newcastle and Leeds, where they also showcased their new collection, which includes clothes made from recycled products.
