Lucy is chief executive of The Alchemists, which works with high growth mid-corporate businesses to accelerate their development and success by focussing on shareholder and management development and succession. Her experience ranges from funding start up and early stage manufacturing businesses in the North East through to mergers and disposals of international operations.

Lucy joined The Alchemists in 2003 after an early career in private equity, corporate development and headhunting with 3i plc, Courtaulds Textiles and Tyzack.  She  was chair of Capital for Enterprise to Nov 2013 where she was responsible for over £4bn of government backed debt and equity support to private and family UK businesses.  She is chair of an angel investment network, along with being a deputy chair of a national qualification business, NCFE, and trustee of a social enterprise investment fund . She was chair of the CBI’s national Small Business Forum from 2010 to 2013 and a member of the advisory board of the government’s new Business Bank.  Lucy is chair of the independent Professional Standards Council, which oversees the Asset Based Finance Association and the national Enterprise Research Centre, focused on the study of growth in private and family businesses. She is a former chair of Northumbria University.

She recently participated in a government advisory board looking at new interventions in private business finance alongside the Banking Taskforce and Future Shape of Business projects for the CBI. Similarly she was a member of BBC Governors’ review of European Union coverage. She was educated at Oxford, holds an MBA and a MSc in forensic psychology and criminology. Her spare time is frittered away with a trans-Atlantic think tank and walking along Northumberland’s deserted beaches. She has recently learnt to dive and is seeking ways to combine this with her other hobbies, chainsawing and church bellringing.