An interview with Victoria Price after attending Modern Women in Business event

By Ben Taylor

You recently attended a Modern Women in Business event, can you tell us a little about the event?
Yes, it’s an event in conjunction with Modern Woman magazine to ‘empower, influence and support women in business’. They have a number of events they host through the year across London, this was the East London one and took place in The Curtain Hotel, Shoreditch.

How did you first hear about the event and what made you want to attend?
Rosie Coxshaw, who is the Founder and Editor of the magazine reached out to AMI to see if anyone wanted to go and I applied for a ticket. I think what attracted me to the event was, firstly the chance to network with and learn from like-minded businesswomen who come from a variety of career backgrounds; but also the opportunity for me to understand the future of business and start-ups from a female perspective.

What stood out for you most about the event?
The panellists were of course fantastic, but I think I was also really surprised and at the variety of people there, in a number of different careers and life stages. There were also a few men there and it was especially interesting to hear their perspective on certain topics.

There were some really inspiring speakers on the day, looking at their topics what did you find most inspiring about each of them?
They were all really inspirational and successful businesswomen in their own right and in many different ways.

To give a quick breakdown of the speakers we had:

Asma Bashir – Chairman of Centuro Global & Senator at World Business Angels Investment (Finance, start-ups, business & the economy)

Suzanne Pool – Founder of Bee-You (Confidence, authenticity & getting your sexy back)

Elena Ophira – Founder & CEO of Weddingly (Start-ups, Marketing and funding)

What I found so inspiring about Asma, was her phenomenal achievements despite her restrictive family and cultural background. When she was younger, she was expected not to work and move to India to get married. She ended up leaving India, returning to England with no qualifications and had to start her life again from scratch. To see her position now as a successful businesswoman and mother is really inspirational.

Elena's success with her own company is pretty amazing considering she started to work for herself pretty much straight out of university. Her passion and drive to learn and network is the reason for her achievements today and I was especially impressed by her bravery to try anything and teach herself so many news skills at such a young age.

Suzanne’s background was in law, specifically, record labels and circumstances in her life made her leave law, totally change career path and self-fund her new business. I was particularly inspired by Suzanne’s open-minded approach and willingness to take risks for something she truly believed in. It is very clear that her enthusiasm for and ability to empower women to feel confident in themselves make her really happy and shows that taking big risks can be worth it.

Will anything you took away from the event change how you go about your work?
I think I will be more confident approaching challenges and work that is out of my comfort zone. Having met a lot of powerful and inspirational women at the event it has encouraged me to strive to inspire, work hard and achieve success.