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Shoot for the moon – Leaders’ Summit speakers (2)

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Session Two at the Leaders’ Summit is entitled “Think out of this world – going global – the world is not enough” and features Kevin Dorren of Diet Chef, Lara Morgan of activbod and Sir Bill Gammell.

“It’s a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work”

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, speaking in May 2013 about the possibility of humans eventually settling on Mars

Kevin Dorren is the founder and CEO of Diet Chef, the UK’s leading delivered diet company.

Diet Chef was started in 2008 and has grown organically without external funding to the 3rd largest diet company in the UK with over 140,000 customers. The company makes dieting easy, tasty and convenient by delivering a month worth of meals to your door that are chef prepared and calorie counted. In 2010 Piper Private Equity bought a minority equity position in the business for £4m and have worked with the founders on expanding the team, geographic reach and marketing channels.

Kevin is also an active seed stage investor, having been one of the first angel investors in Fanduel, Fine Coffee Club and Flavourly.

Prior to founding Diet Chef, Kevin was a founder of Orbital Software, a knowledge management company that grew in Edinburgh and Palo Alto and was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 before being sold to Sopheon plc in 2001.

Kevin Dorren

Kevin Dorren

Lara Morgan began to develop the skills of an entrepreneur at an early age. Her parents lived and worked in Hong Kong, whilst she and her brother would travel halfway round the world to school in Scotland. Her independent childhood and her parents being wonderful ‘leaders by example’ all attributed to her understanding of business today.

Lara finished school at the age of 18 fully expecting to attend university. However, that same year her father was declared bankrupt. As a result, she found herself borrowing her first business clothes from a mate of her mother’s and went for an interview. At 18 she taught herself the art of sales, and by 21 she was managing a Yellow Pages sales team in 6 countries in the Gulf.

In 1991, at the age of 23, she started her first business, Pacific Direct Ltd, which manufactured and sold brand licensed toiletries and amenities to the hotel industry. Seventeen years later, she sold my majority share (99%) in 2008 for the sum of £20million.

Since then, she spends quality time with her husband and three lively daughters. She is now the Founder of CompanyShortcuts.com, a source of practical advice and frameworks to enable businesses leaders to achieve accelerated growth.

Lara is seriously passionate about Leadership, Self and Employee Motivation (you might even remember her for celebrating achieving her first £1m profit by taking her staff on an all-expenses paid holiday to Barbados in 2005) and Business Growth and she regularly talks about these and other specific topics based on her own experiences.

Lara Morgan

Lara Morgan

Sir Bill Gammell had a lot to live up to. He was the son of Jimmy Gammell, one of Charlotte Square’s most illustrious investors.  But his energy exploration company, Cairn Energy, has exceeded all expectations, especially after oil discoveries in Rajasthan in India. The flotation of Cairn India was one of the biggest in the sub-continent. He stepped down as Cairn Energy chairman last year.

Bill, a former Scotland rugby cap, has always maintained a contrarian view of the world which has given him the edge – but he believes the key to success is teamwork and encouraging people to get things done.  He supports a number of charitable projects, including the Scottish Institute of Sport Foundation.

Sir Bill Gammell

Sir Bill Gammell



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