A flagship event celebrating and supporting female founders is returning to the Midlands this month, bringing together some of the UK’s most prominent women in business.
IGNITE26, organised by female founder community The 51% Club, will take place at Millennium Point in Birmingham on September 28, with more than 250 founders expected to attend for a day focused on business growth, ambition and leadership.
The event has the theme ‘To Seven Figures and Beyond’, with the organisers putting the focus firmly on what it takes to build and scale a business to £1m in revenue and beyond.
The speaker line-up includes entrepreneur Sharmadean Reid MBE, who was born and raised in Wolverhampton and has spent two decades building businesses including WAH Nails and The Stack World, as well as her latest venture, 39BC.
Manchester-born entrepreneur and creator Lorna Luxe will also appear. She built a following of more than two million on Instagram before turning her online community into two founder-led brands, lifestyle business LA Space and beauty brand 98 Beauty.
Also appearing is Lucie Macleod, who started Hair Syrup with £300 and a TikTok account. She has since been named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30, secured a place on The Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing UK companies list and struck a deal with Boots. The company is projected to generate £6.5m in revenue in 2026 without taking outside investment.
Maxine Laceby, founder of Absolute Collagen, will also speak. She started the business from her Gloucestershire kitchen at the age of 50 and has since built it into a company with £30m turnover and a reported £45m valuation.
Stefanie Sword-Williams, whose book F**k Being Humble became a Sunday Times bestseller, will close the conference with a keynote focused on ambition and self-promotion.
The event will also feature Melissa Snover, founder of Birmingham-based Rem3dy Health, Scarlett Allen-Horton, founder of executive search firm Harper Fox Partners, and Zandra Moore MBE, founder of Leeds-based AI consultancy Zygens.
Other confirmed speakers include Geeta Sidhu-Robb, Kameese Davis, Kavita Parmar, Lisa Shepherd, Minnie Nguyen and Rose Ovensehi. The event will be hosted by journalist and broadcaster Marverine Cole, a newsreader on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
IGNITE26 is the flagship conference of The 51% Club, which was founded in 2024 by Birmingham-based entrepreneur Tara Attfield-Tomes.
The organisation says it has grown to more than 2,000 members across the country, with five local hubs in Birmingham, Leamington Spa, Leicester, London and Worcester.
The club says the West Midlands has the highest proportion of female-owned companies in the UK, but that just 3% received external funding during the past five years.
It also highlights research showing that only 2-4% of female-founded businesses reach £1m in revenue, with the organisation arguing that more needs to be done to help women scale successful companies.
IGNITE26 is being held at Millennium Point for the first time and will feature keynote speeches, fireside chats and panel discussions. The event is intended to give founders the opportunity to hear directly from women who have built and scaled successful businesses, while also highlighting the opportunities available to ambitious entrepreneurs based outside London.
