We are proud to be a team who believe that entrepreneurship makes a stronger UK.
the team
Team members
Timothy Barnes
Chief Executive Officer
Timothy is an entrepreneur and former venture capital investor. Before formally joining our team, Tim has advised CFE for a number of years. Previously, he ran his own business which supported start up companies and ran an incubator space in Westminster. Before that, he ran the centre for entrepreneurship at UCL, which he led from launch and grew to being one of the largest activities of its type in the world and has continued there in a part-time teaching role leading Strategy for post graduate entrepreneurship students. As chair of Trustees for NACUE, Tim has had significant experience working within the entrepreneurship sector alongside young people and holds a number of non-executive posts. A graduate of UCL, he holds the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and is a Fellow of the RSA.
Richard Cull Thomas
Deputy CEO / COO
Richard is Deputy CEO and COO at Centre for Entrepreneurs and responsible for CFE’s operations, finances and systems, and leadership of the NEF+ programme.
Prior to joining CFE (then NEF), Richard was at British Telecom, in a senior operational capacity leading customer service teams in the Consumer division and working with EE prior to their acquisition by BT. During his time at BT Richard developed deep expertise in customer experience, out- and insourcing of high-volume service operations and fixed and mobile telecoms technology.
Before BT, Richard worked in the aerospace industry at BAE Systems, in a wide variety of roles – engineering, project management and commercial, delivering cutting-edge technology and international defence programmes.
Outside of the day job, is a partner in his wife’s property development business, stays fit through a combination of running, cycling and dog walking and is, slowly, learning to fly fish.
Matt Smith
Senior Fellow
Matt oversees CFE’s Incubator and Accelerator Network and Refugee Entrepreneurship Network. He was recruited by Luke Johnson in 2013 to design, launch and run the Centre as a think tank, before merging it with the New Entrepreneurs Foundation in 2017 to create a unified entrepreneurship foundation. Alongside his ongoing CFE role, Matt is director of research and policy at Global Entrepreneurship Network.
Previously, Matt co-founded student enterprise charity NACUE and worked at Enterprise UK. He helped launch the European Startup Network and served as board member from 2016-2019. He sits on the board of the National Enterprise Network .
Izzy Daly-Carnell
Operations Lead
Izzy is the Operations Lead for Centre for Entrepreneurs, she has over 4 years experience in building and maintaining key relationships. She ensures all operational systems are working effectively including CRM systems. She manages and coordinates content for CFE’s website and plans and delivers our events. She is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and helps support our NEF+ programme by sustaining communities and key relationships.
Maxx Turing
NEF+ Programme Manager
Maxx is a 2020 alumnus of the NEF programme, winning the 2020 CEO’s Award and CVC Young Innovator Award for his business, Startbook, which provides products and services to entrepreneurship programmes. Following completion of the programme, Maxx started working on Startbook full-time and is now providing programme delivery services for CFE as well as other entrepreneurship programmes. Maxx draws from his 7+ years experience as an operational leader in startups as well as bringing his unique experience of working with multiple entrepreneurship programmes including Entrepreneur First, The HackTrain Accelerator and The Family. He holds an Oxford science MA (Hons) and a Quantic MBA (Hons).
Tessa Lin Wang
Content & Social Media Lead
Tessa joins CFE as the social media and content lead, with a particular focus on its flagship NEF+ programme. She brings along a background in Fashion, consumer-facing brands and publishing (Singapore Press Holdings) across Singapore and London – also having contributed to Gen-Z targeted projects for the H&M Group and Future Laboratory. Outside this role at CFE, Tessa is also working on building Brainchild, her startup that focuses on redesigning the job creation pipeline for the creative industry. She was awarded a startup visa sponsorship in 2020 to make this happen in the UK, after proposing it to her university, the London College of Fashion.
Alicia Davis
Founder Talent Lead
Alicia is our Founder Talent Lead at CFE where she is responsible for the selection of our founder cohort for the NEF+ programme. The completion of her undergraduate degree in Psychology BSc (Hons) and masters degree in Occupational Psychology MSc (Hons) sparked her motivation to identify, understand and extract the best in people in the start-up ecosystem by prioritising diversity. She joins us from the talent team at Founders Factory where she contributed to managing the end-to-end recruitment for founder and operational roles as well as people operations. Alicia is passionate about providing value to entrepreneurs starting out on their challenging founder journey.
Ben MacGill
Founder Talent Lead
Ben joins CfE as one of our Talent Founder Leads, having previously scouted the 2020 Cohort. Ben’s career to date revolves primarily around recruiting for high growth businesses, gaining great exposure to London’s startup ecosystem. Prior to this, he worked within the legal field and spent time assisting people over 50 reenter the workforce and start their own ventures. He has a passion for everything entrepreneurship, revels in meeting inspiring and ambitious people and loves to support small businesses in any way possible. He is the founder of his own local drinks company and aims to scale this with support of the NEF+ community in the near future.
Bella Eames-Matthews
Community Manager
A creative producer working towards connecting individuals, communities and systems. She is particularly interested in exploring the power of collaboration and developing supportive ecosystems for entrepreneurs around the world. She previously managed the British Council’s Developing Inclusive and Creative Economies programme, which looked at building economies through a cultural relations lens and before that coordinated the Global Social Enterprise program working with ecosystem players in 31 countries to support the social enterprise movement. Prior to British Council, Bella worked in public service delivery as operations manager at Newham Hospital later being selected to be part of the Future Leaders program with insight of managing social housing, schools, hospitals and roads. Bella has an undergraduate degree in international development and international relations and is currently completing a masters in social entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths University.
Emily-Jane Eames-Matthews
Community Manager
Emily Jane is a dedicated and motivated freelance community manager, using her extensive experience across event management, administration and marketing and communications to provide a broad spectrum of support for the communities she serves. She is particularly interested in exploring the effectiveness of online, hybrid and in-person touchpoints for people to gather around, exploring the best options for geographically dispersed communities.
Emily-Jane has an undergraduate degree in Psychology BSc (Hons). Alongside her shared role as community manager for the Centre for Entrepreneurs, she manages a global community of social enterprises with the Social Enterprise World Forum.