Meet the Investors: Edinburgh

Lauren Hartley

Deal Manager, KPMG

Lauren has more than seven years of experience in fundraising for high-growth technology companies. This experience spans pre-seed funding through to pre-IPO stages and covers both debt and equity fundraising.

Lauren has significant experience advising companies throughout their fundraising journey and has developed a strong network of investors across venture capital, corporate venture capital, family offices, and angel groups.

In addition, she has delivered a number of Fundraising 101 workshops for the Ascend Programme and TIC Accelerator. Lauren also delivers the four-month Founded By Her programme, which supports female-founded and female-led businesses preparing to raise a Series A round.

Alex Heerema

Investment Manager, Ascension

As an Investment Manager at Ascension, Alex is responsible for sourcing, screening and performing due diligence on investment opportunities for Ascension's Generalist (agnostic) Funds.

Alex is an operator turned VC and prior to joining Ascension was an early employee at two B2B software startups, where he focussed on launching and optimising go-to-market strategies to deliver scalable growth. He also has investment experience at Prime Ventures in Amsterdam and Techstars, London.

Alex holds an MSc in Economics and Strategy for Business from Imperial College London and a BA in Political Economy from King’s College London.

As one of the UK’s leading and most active early stage VC's, Ascension invests into exceptional founders at the earliest stages, providing capital, expertise, and community to scale the next generation of breakout startups.

Charlie Lyon Carroll

Investment Director, IW Capital

No bio provided

Louise Mackie

Investment Manager, Foresight Group

Louise Mackie is an Investment Manager in the Private Equity team at Foresight Group, where she focuses on sourcing and executing investments into high-growth scale-ups and SMEs, as well as providing strategic and financial support to portfolio companies. Prior to joining Foresight, Louise was a senior operator at a VC-backed FinTech scale-up, leading across the firm’s strategy and operations functions. She started her career as a strategy consultant at EY and Alpha FMC, advising clients in the financial services sector.

Victoria McLaren

Investment Manager, Maven Capital Partners

Victoria is an Investment Manager at Maven Capital Partners and is based in the Edinburgh office. Her role involves sourcing and completing equity investment deals (up to £5m cheque size), with a focus on Scottish companies and opportunities for the Investment Fund for Scotland across a wide range of industry sectors.  Victoria comes from a legal background, having practiced as a corporate lawyer for seven years prior to joining Maven, specialising in M&A, private equity, venture capital and early-stage investment work.