Sahar Hashemi

A former lawyer, Sahar Hashemi founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain with her brother and built it into one of the UK’s most recognized high street brands with 110 bars and a turnover of £30m.

She left the day-to-day management of Coffee Republic in 2001 and published a bestselling book, "Anyone Can Do It: Building Coffee Republic From Our Kitchen Table," which has been translated into 6 languages and is 2nd-highest selling book on entrepreneurship after Richard Branson.

In 2005 she founded Skinny Candy, a brand of sugar free sweets, labeled hip by Vogue magazine. Skinny Candy was sold to confectionery conglomerate Glisten PLC in 2007. In 2011 Hashemi was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers, alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Jonathan Ive. In June 2012 Hashemi was awarded an OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity. and was listed in the Maseratti 100, definitive list of 100 of Britain’s most successful philanthropists, investors, mentors and advisors, who are supporting the next generation of up and coming business talent.

She is currently co-chair of the Government Scale Up Taskforce and is actively involved in the roll-out of Change Please, a social enterprise that trains and hires homeless people to run coffee carts. She sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute and British Fashion Council Fashion Trust.

Her latest book, “Start Up Forever: How to Build a Start Up Culture in a Big Company," based on her experiences of working with large organizations, was published in 2019 and became The Financial Times Business Book of The Month.