Lesley Sutherland

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Bio

Lesley Sutherland is a senior executive, founder and board advisor with 25+ years’ experience helping high-growth, highly regulated organisations scale with confidence. Her core strengths are building the operational foundations that make growth possible - systems, processes, quality, regulatory readiness and good governance - without slowing the business down. Her background spans life sciences, biotech, pharma and deep tech, and she has worked internationally across Europe, the USA and Asia Pacific.

Lesley has operated at VP level and has also worked in start-up environments where you have to “wear many hats”, balancing speed with rigour. She’s held roles with organisations including Concept Life Sciences, Chemify, Sartorius Stedim, Biopta, Q-One Biotech and others. Alongside her commercial work, Lesley is deeply people-driven.

She volunteers with the EY Foundation and previously with Aspire for Equality and The Prince’s Trust/PSYBT-style programmes, supporting employability and mentoring - and she brings that same coaching mindset into her work with founders. She previously sat on the board of a community interest group and is currently on the board of a chemical manufacturing start-up. She is also an angel investor (via Mint Ventures) and enjoys supporting ambitious founders building meaningful businesses.

Focus of 1-2-1 Session

A 1:1 with Lesley is a practical working session that typically focuses on:

  • Operational and regulatory readiness - what you need in place now to scale later (quality systems, processes, employee training programmes, governance, compliance mindset).
  • Investor-facing clarity - tightening your elevator pitch, executive summary, business plan and investor deck so the story is clear, credible and consistent.
  • Risk and “root-cause” diagnosis - quickly spotting what is likely to break as you grow, and what to fix first.
  • Leadership and decision support - helping founders prioritise, build confidence, and “do the right thing” when trade-offs are messy.
  • Stakeholder Engagement - how to effectively communicate and see the strengths of each stakeholder.

 

Lesley is open to engaging as a project-based consultant, advisor, fractional/interim leader (COO/VP Ops/VP Quality & Regulatory), NED/trustee, and as an investor. She’s also happy to support around pitch moments - including reviewing a 10-minute pitch and giving practical feedback ahead of pitch days. Lesley is best suited to founders of pre-revenue and early-revenue start-ups - especially B2B businesses in science, tech, manufacturing, biotech and deep tech - who need to get investor-ready and operationally credible. She can be helpful beyond those sectors too, particularly when the challenge is building robust foundations, reducing risk and improving execution. Or simply being able to review vast data sets and help determine actionable insights.