Canadian Entrepreneur, philanthropist and angel investor Sherry Coutu CBE has been announced as Newcastle University’s latest David Goldman Professor, and will give a lecture on the 12th March in the David Goldman Lecture Theatre. A statement released by Newcastle University reported that in this role her focus will be “to extend the connectivity and interdisciplinarity of programmes at the Business School and its commitment to pioneering innovation.”
Coutu has earned degrees at the University of British Columbia, LSE and Harvard University, studying political science with economics, economics, and business respectively. She worked at Anderson Consulting in financial services before moving on to Coopers and Lybrand where she headed a shareholder value analysis unit in corporate finance. Following this, she applied to Harvard Business School, “not thinking [she] would get in”, where she was president of the European Club and specialised in entrepreneurship.
Coutu became an angel investor in 2000, and has invested in over 50 companies. She promotes the unique role that angel investors play: not only do they fund start-ups, but “mentor companies and help them learn how to make their product work”.
Among other companies, Coutu is the founder of Founders4Schools and Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK). Founders4Schools is an outreach programme that promotes its goal to “to connect students to the people who create jobs: entrepreneurs and business leaders. And we do this because we want to make it really simple for students to understand what sort of opportunities they can pursue. At the end of the day, we want kids to follow high-impact career paths that bring them genuine enjoyment.”
SVC2UK, an event in London, provides a platform for interaction between more experienced investors, philanthropists and CEOs, and people creating their own products and businesses. Coutu highlights the value that this provides by enabling more junior founders to explore the trajectory of entrepreneur, to founder, to investor.
