Our CEO Neeta Patel has been awarded a CBE in The Queen’s Birthday Honours, in recognition of her services to entrepreneurship and technology.
Our chairman Oliver Pawle comments:
“The Centre for Entrepreneurs’ trustees are delighted for Neeta. She has been a pioneer in the entrepreneurial community for many years, growing the New Entrepreneurs Foundation and now CFE into an internationally-respected charity.
She has worked tirelessly to promote entrepreneurship, supporting thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs within CFE and through her volunteer roles”.
Neeta joined the New Entrepreneurs Foundation as founding CEO and has overseen nine cohorts of 319 aspiring young entrepreneurs complete our flagship development programme, NEF Fast Track. More than 40% have become founders, collectively raising £100m in investment and creating more than 2,200 jobs.
In 2017, Neeta led the merger with the Centre for Entrepreneurs think tank to create a unified entrepreneurship foundation, combining research, programme delivery, community building, and policy campaigns. She also sits on advisory boards for Tech London
Advocates, City University’s City Ventures, and London Business School. In 2019, she was awarded Woman of the Year at the Asian Achievers Awards.
Neeta comments:
“I am deeply humbled to have been awarded this honour. Entrepreneurship and technology has been my passion and my life for many decades, but I have been specially gifted to have worked with many amazing people at the Centre for Entrepreneurs in the last ten years.
I would like to thank Oliver Pawle who gave me this opportunity, the trustees of CFE who have been a great support, and especially Dee Stirling who has supported me throughout. I simply could not have done any of this without the brilliant team at CFE (past and present)
who, each in their own ways, have helped UK entrepreneurship.
I salute my present team of Richard Cull Thomas, Matt Smith, Ffion Fabian and Laura Campbell. We, along with many others, have been through challenging times over the last few months but we have survived. I remain steadfast in my belief that entrepreneurship is a
force for good – solving challenges and changing lives for the better, more so today than ever before.
Thank you also to the many people who have supported both me and CFE over the last few years – too many to name individually, but you know who you are – thank you all”.