Accelerate Cambridge mentors

Dr. N. Sarah Arden is a healthcare and life sciences executive with deep expertise in global regulatory strategy, health policy, competitive intelligence, and healthcare innovation. Her career spans senior roles at AstraZeneca and GSK and scientific and program management roles at the US Food and Drug Administration. She brings a combination of regulatory authority, commercial insight, and policy influence to the organisations and boards she advises.

She has worked with global health authorities and industry bodies — including the European Medicines Agency, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, and EFPIA — to advance regulatory modernisation, accelerate patient access, and shape the policy frameworks driving the next generation of healthcare innovation. Sarah is the founder of Cambase, a healthcare and policy intelligence platform, and holds advisory and supervisory roles across several life sciences and deep tech ventures and consortia. She holds a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and completed NIH fellowship training at Stanford University.

Martin is an accomplished Design & Innovation Strategist with a wealth of experience creating commercially successful product and service solutions for world-leading healthcare and consumer brands, bringing value and differentiation to clients and users.

Passionate about realising the potential of innovation through combining Design Thinking and cutting-edge technology, translating complex social, technical, economic, and environmental problems into simple, actionable solutions.

Strongly believes in the role of creativity and collaboration in problem-solving, offering novel insights into how to innovate, where to focus, and what new strategies, products, processes, and systems to develop.

Thrives in multidisciplinary teams, leveraging diverse perspectives and skills, with extensive experience providing leadership and strategy at senior levels within organisations.

Term Sheets: Chris will provide an overview of the key elements of a typical fundraising term sheet.

Chris is a partner and head of the emerging companies’ team at Mishcon de Reya. He has over a decade of experience advising early stage and fast growth businesses, particularly in the technology sector.

Chris practices both as a corporate lawyer and commercial and IP specialist and splits his time between offices in the golden triangle of UK innovation; Cambridge (where he lives), London, and Oxford. Mishcon de Reya’s market-leading technology practice advises on over 150 fundraising transactions every year, acting for both growth companies and angel, venture capital and corporate investors.

Mainda grew up in East Africa before moving to England. She is an International Law and Business graduate with over 15 years of product management and marketing experience in multinational companies and startups covering various industries including publishing and education; professional services, shopping television, retail, travel, and the public sector.

Mainda is passionate about working with entrepreneurs, makers and young people to help build successful ventures. Using her skills and expertise in commercial, technology and intellectual property management, she has been supporting students and entrepreneurs through programmes at Cambridge Judge Business School; the former The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme and other community engagement initiatives covering girls’ education, trade, bio-innovation and food security in Africa.

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Dr Sarah Mardle is a seasoned leader with extensive experience in healthcare, from scaling start-ups to executive roles in multinational organisations.

After many decades in the industry, she founded Alma Business Consulting to empower entrepreneurs through tailored consultancy and coaching, combining strategic insight with hands-on expertise.

A certified coach and dedicated mentor, Sarah contributes to the University of Cambridge’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, supporting programmes like Cambridge Judge Business School’s Ignite and Accelerate. Her passion for fostering resilience and leadership in entrepreneurship is grounded in a career marked by innovation and sustainable growth.

Andrew is a chartered accountant with extensive experience of accountancy, audit, and advisory services, from over 25 years of working at national accountancy firms. Since 2025, Andrew is a partner at a regional accountancy practice based in Cambridge.

Over his career, Andrew has worked alongside a wide range of businesses, from founder led ventures to multi-national groups, across a variety of sectors, most notably life sciences and technology. Over recent years, his focus has increasingly been on those early-stage businesses which seek Angel and Institutional funding, supporting them with their growth plans and compliance requirements, often in preparation for significant Series A investment rounds and audit readiness.

Former National Director of Primary Care at NHS England,  Dr Ursula Montgomery helps healthcare innovators turn promising ideas into real-world adoption. Drawing on senior leadership experience across the NHS, government and the pharmaceutical industry, she advises founders on NHS market access, customer validation, evidence generation, stakeholder engagement, commercialisation and scaling innovation across complex health systems.

Charles Nixon has 40 years experience in marketing and growing companies. He has successfully navigated through 3 major recessions and 2 tech booms. And has worked in textiles; telecommunications; software; data processing; financial services and education, working for Courtaulds, IWS, Accenture , Mercury communications, Extel and Societe General. His specialism is marketing and strategy; encompassing market research ( founding one of the UK’s first computerised marketing intelligence systems), market planning; marcomms; new product launches; branding and strategy.

He co-founded a consultancy and Fintech startup in the 1980s and then founded Cambridge Marketing College in 1991, growing it to a dominant position in its sector before retiring in 2016 to run a publishing venture and establish his foundation.

He is an author of numerous articles and textbooks on marketing. He is a visiting lecturer in marketing and innovation. He is also vice chair of trustees for the Cromwell Museum. Charles has a degree in Modern History and Economics from Manchester University and an MBA from Warwick Business School. He is on the Advisory Panel of Harvard Business Review, a Fellow of the Royal Society of arts, an advisor for Astia and a Chartered marketer. In 2017 he was voted one of the most influential businessmen in Cambridge.

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Pav is a highly respected patent attorney with over 25 years’ experience. He is a Partner based in Venner Shipley’s Cambridge office and is the firm’s former Managing Partner.

Pav specialises in high tech fields covering electronics, communications and software including AI and machine learning, and quantum technologies.

He played a central role in Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) G1/19 (Pedestrian Simulation) which is the most authoritative case on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions at the EPO, and for which he won the Managing IP award for European Impact Case of the Year in 2022.

Pav advises universities, start-ups and multinational corporations on IP and IP strategy.

He regularly speaks on IP in the UK and around the world and is a contributor to the TenU USIT Guide for Software 2024. He has been recognised as a leading individual by the Legal 500, Managing IP, IAM Patent 1000, IAM Strategy 300, and JUVE UK Patent.

Alex Smeets is a self-employed consultant to institutions looking to develop their systems and ability for commercialising research results, drawing on Cambridge’s collective commercialisation experience. He is an Associate of Cambridge Enterprise’s Global Outreach Programme, which focuses on helping universities from around the world to strengthen their ability to commercialise their knowledge and research results.

He frequently gives presentations to visiting delegations about the Cambridge knowledge commercialisation cluster, is an assessor of business innovation grant applications for public authorities in the UK and elsewhere and helps with various technology venture acceleration programmes and business plan competitions in Cambridge on a pro bono basis. Until April 2011 Alex

was a Regional Director of Oxford Innovation Ltd and prior to that an Executive Director of St John’s Innovation Centre Ltd. He has a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge.

Daniil is an experienced venture builder with more than 12 years in launching and scaling technology startups worldwide. Holding an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School, his notable achievements include successfully distributing over 50,000 VR headsets at Fibrum via major retail channels such as Best Buy and Amazon, and expanding Radario, an event analytics platform, into the US and UK through a key partnership with Eventbrite.

Daniil also co-founded Libi & Daughters, a luxury direct-to-consumer skincare brand, and currently serves as Head of TonTon Games, a Web3 gaming venture. Across his entrepreneurial journey, he has secured over £3.5 million in funding. Committed to fostering entrepreneurial success, he actively mentors startup founders through global programmes including Barclays Eagle Labs, LSE Generate, and Accelerate Cambridge, helping them streamline their path to product-market fit.

I have over 25 years of experience working in the deeptech industry and academia with high technology companies and in company cluster development. I hold Dr.Sc. in information systems science in computer games development. I started my real entrepreneurial journey setting up a sports software company back in 1999 innovating sports technology with sports industry partners (wearables with e.g. heart rate variability and training effect, wristop GPS for various sports) and smart phone applications which I exited successfully. Since then, I have been part of several startups and now running 3 companies (video games edutech, educational content production, ‘other stuff’). My current big project is running a video games related educational program for people between 18-25 with almost 100.000 participants in over 140 countries. I also maintain a great network of connections and have raised money and evaluated hundreds of SME grant applications for European Commission startup programs- Eureka for instance- and I am an adviser at Cambridge University Centre for Science and Policy.

Chris is an internationally recognised Company Director and Business Coach with a sustained record of achievement in global pharma, biotech, healthcare technology and management consultancy.

He was UK Sales and Marketing Director at AstraZeneca during a 20-year career and from 2002-2018 provided commercialization expertise and management consultancy to global pharma as Company Director at Oxford PharmaGenesis, an internationally renowned consultancy which was recognised by the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2015 and again in 2019.

Chris has practical hands-on experience in growing and shaping businesses of all sizes and at all stages — new or early ventures, SMEs or Big Pharma — and supporting them in realising commercial opportunities for scalable growth to achieve peak commercial success and maximum shareholder value.

He is currently providing private bespoke management coaching exclusively with CEOs and C-Suite Directors. He is also Mentor and Coach to Life Sciences Ventures at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and The Crick Institute London.

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Miranda is an Expert in Residence at the London Institute for Healthcare engineering at King’s College, London and Business Mentor for entrepreneurship programmes in the University of Cambridge. She is a member of the Department of Zoology Alumni and Fundraising Committee of the University of Cambridge.

She brings experience as a Technology Transfer Manager at Cambridge Enterprise, University of Cambridge, where she assessed and marketed life science technologies, negotiated licences, and spun-out companies. She was responsible for technology transfer at the University of Cambridge for the Cambridge-MIT Institute. In her five years at the seed capital firm, Cambridge Research and Innovation, she identified and invested in early stage technologies. Miranda worked with Dr Hermann Hauser KBE FRS on the founding of Cambridge Network.

Miranda holds an MA (Cantab) in Natural Sciences, is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and holds the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting’s Diploma in Management Accounting. She has edited eight books and contributes to industry publications.