There's a woman I haven't met yet.
She's building something right now. Solving a problem that keeps her up at night. Probably underfunded. Almost certainly underestimated. She's the reason we're sponsoring ClimbUK's Women in Business Award.
But let's start with a queue.
At the Anthropy National Gathering, I found myself waiting for coffee next to Gordon Bateman, founder of ClimbUK. We talked about systems. About who gets access and who gets overlooked. About London versus everywhere else. About capital flowing to the familiar whilst innovation happens in the margins.
By the time we reached the front, we both knew what needed to happen.
For two decades, we've worked with a single premise: glass ceilings don't shatter because individuals try harder. They shatter when you develop talent, their managers, and senior sponsors simultaneously. Tri-Level™. All three levels at once. It's why 35% get promoted during our programmes, not years later. Why 98% recommend it.
But here's what we've learned: systemic barriers require systemic solutions.
All-female founding teams received 2% of UK venture capital in 2024. Not because women aren't building brilliant businesses, they are. Not because the ideas aren't there, they're everywhere. But because access has a postcode, a network, a pattern of recognition that excludes by design.
ClimbUK understands this.
While investment events concentrate in the South, ClimbUK deliberately spotlights entrepreneurship in the regions that capital typically ignores. It's not about being nice. It's about being smart. Because if you only fund the people you've always funded, in the places you've always looked, you're not investing in innovation. You're investing in repetition.
Which brings me back to that woman I haven't met.
She's somewhere in the UK right now, building something that matters. Creating jobs. Solving problems. Doing it with a fraction of the resources her male counterparts receive. She deserves more than admiration. She deserves visibility, access, and the networks that actually fuel growth.
That's what this award represents.
Over the next ten months, we'll attend ClimbUK events and the festival itself at Leeds Dock this summer. We'll watch founders pitch, investors listen, possibilities multiply. And we'll meet her, this year's winner. We want to understand what she's building and what barriers she's facing. Not to fix her. To understand what we need to fix in the system.
Because that's the work. Whether we're shattering glass ceilings through Tri-Level™, building entrepreneurial leadership capability for organisations navigating disruption, or developing AI-ready leaders for an uncertain future, we're in the business of changing systems, not just developing individuals.
You can't solve a 2% problem with a 2% solution.
ClimbUK gets this. Inclusion isn't corporate theatre. Regional innovation isn't secondary. And celebrating women who are building against the odds isn't charity, it's investment in an economy that actually works for everyone.
That coffee queue conversation became something bigger. A partnership. A commitment. A belief that talent is evenly distributed but opportunity isn't.
If you're an HR leader, Talent Director, or Chief People Officer looking for development that changes systems rather than individuals, we should talk. And if you're an entrepreneur building something that matters, especially if you're doing it outside the usual postcodes, networks, and patterns, come to Climb26.
I'll be the one looking for someone I haven't met yet.
Join us at Climb26, 1-2 July at Leeds Dock.
Learn more about our work at jennygarrett.global