Bright Ideas Trust’s Board of Trustees is made up of the following individuals:

Alex McPherson

Alex heads up the Octopus Ventures team.  He also has particular responsibility within the team for evaluating and assessing potential investee companies, deal structuring and negotiation and portfolio management with a view to maximizing the returns that are generated.  He has extensive experience of investing into smaller companies. Prior to joining Octopus, he worked for ten years at SG Warburg as a trade and risk manager in equity derivatives, and later founded a growth consultancy for small businesses, assisting a number of small businesses with their financing requirements prior to taking up his current position.

Margaret Mountford

Following many years as a corporate law firm partner at Herbert Smith, Margaret has more recently taken on a number of business roles. Margaret is a non-Executive Director of Amstrad plc. and Georgica plc. She also chairs the Board of Governors of an inner-London Church of England Comprehensive School. Until recently Margaret had taken on the role as one of Sir Alan Sugar’s advisors in the BBC’s The Apprentice television show. In 2009 Margaret left the show to continue her PhD in papyrology at University College London, studying documents found in Egypt and written in ancient Greek.

Paul Humphries

Paul Humphries has spent the last 25 years working in business start-up and corporate venturing.  He was a founder and director of Opta, a business creation company that helped to start up online bank Egg and the Opta Sports Index which was sold to a Fortune 500 company. Prior to this he had a corporate career spent mainly with Cable & Wireless and Philips in a range of general management, sales, marketing and strategy roles. At C&W, he was ultimately responsible for two corporate ventures, where he first got the entrepreneurial bug.  Today he works with numerous start-up and early stage companies, advising on proposition development, business planning, fundraising and organisational and operational development and as an angel investor.

Simon Eaves

Simon Eaves is the Managing Director for Accenture’s Products operating group in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Accenture’s Products operating group serves a set of consumer-relevant industries: Retail; Consumer Goods & Services; Life Sciences; Automotive, Industrial Equipment, Infrastructure & Transportation Services; and Air, Freight & Logistics and Travel Services.  In addition, Simon manages all aspects of Accenture’s work with SABMiller globally.  Simon has worked with a variety of clients including Uniliever, Reckitt, Booker, KwikSave, Boots, Danone and others.  He received his Bachelor of Administration in Honours from University College London (UCL), his Mini Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and a diploma in accounting and finance from ACCA.