Funding Venture Conference: Family Office Panel

Sara is an economist who started her working career in HM Treasury, before moving over to the City with roles including Global Head of FX Strategy at JP Morgan Private Bank.  For the past 7 years Sara has chaired the advisory board and investment committee for a family office with a substantial interest in private markets, and more recently has helped a community of family offices source and build direct investment portfolios (including venture capital).  Outside of finance, Sara is a keen champion of children's mental health and has recently published a picture book that I'm sure she'd love to tell you about.

**Nigel Meir** who, along his family, has been investing in venture, funds and directs, for twenty years alongside other family and institutional investors. He has run investment management businesses, both large and boutique, and managed venture funds. He is currently a venture partner and LP of a group investing in AI / cyber and other deeptech companies with around $350m invested across 35 companies. His main sectoral interests in venture: cyber/AI; fintech; life sciences but not pharma / biotech; digital assets / blockchain. He read medicine at Oxford University and, after several years practising medicine, including in the army, and a period in the foreign service, he has been investing his own and other's funds for the last 30 plus years. He also advises the investments of a billion dollar UK endowment. 

A lawyer by training, Ed spent his formative years in private practice working on a range of corporate finance transactions and has over a decade of experience advising on M&A and other strategic corporate transactions. He is now operating partner at Damazein Family Office which is the financial sponsor of the venture capital fund Ultratech Capital Partners. Ultratech invests in early-stage technology companies, in the seed to series A sweet spot, focusing on certain types of ‘dual use’ critical technology across six verticals, namely quantum technology, AI, data & network security, advanced materials, semiconductors & micro-electronics, and energy storage & generation.