3 April 2025

Celebrating Employability and Entrepreneurship: The Forward Trust’s Annual Dragon’s Den Event

In collaboration with the Financial Times, The Forward Trust’s enterprise team hosted their second ever ‘Dragon’s Den Event’ today (Thursday 3 April 2025) at the Financial Times offices in London. The event featured three of Forward’s enterprise clients who each pitched their own business to a panel of ‘dragons’, which included Forward’s Chair of Trustees, Tony Adams.

The Dragon’s Den event began with a warm welcome from Asi Panditharatna, Executive Director of Employment Services, and Tevfick Souleiman, Head of Enterprise. They both introduced the event and discussed the importance of the enterprise services offered at Forward. We also heard from Jacqui Dobson from the Financial Times, who discussed how proud she was to be working on the 2^nd Dragon’s Den event that Forward have put on.

Tony Adams, in his first public engagement for The Forward Trust since formally taking over as our Chair of Trustees, thanked the Financial Times for all of their support in setting up this event. He gave an inspiring speech about his own journey with addiction and ex-offending, and shared what he did once in recovery to better himself and improve his own entrepreneurial acumen. He then joined the rest of the panel (Rukasana Bhaijee, Financial Times Global Head of DEI Inclusion, Lisa Raftery, Head of Grants, Social Investment Business, and Cally Ellison, Enterprise Mentor, The Forward Trust) and the wonderful pitches from our entrepreneurs began.

Jody

Jody was the first entrepreneur to take to the stage. She presented her business idea, Chef4Life, which is an enterprise that provides cooking workshops that focus on health and wellbeing. Her service aims to provide sessions where clients can speak directly to chefs and nutritionists to seek education about nutrition. With this business idea, she wants to make health and wellbeing a priority in all communities.

Adetola

Adetola, a self-proclaimed ambassador for respect and inclusion, pitched her business, the Back2Life Project UK, to the ‘dragons’. The Back2Life Project is a social enterprise dedicated to supporting and empowering neurodivergent minority women with their reintegration into community after serving time in prison. The approach would include mindset change, mentorship, creative workshops, holistic therapy, and team building.

Benjamin

Benjamin, our final entrepreneur to pitch, proposed WALKIE, an app created to connect users to exercise together. Having attended university during the pandemic in 2020, Benjamin struggled to find a regular partner to exercise with, which meant he struggled to motivate himself. WALKIE would allow users to find others local to them who they could exercise with to increase motivation, access, and community for groups who otherwise might miss out on exercise opportunities.

Not only were the pitches from our three entrepreneurs an absolute pleasure to listen to, the team at the Financial Times also treated us to a tour of their offices, including a stunning view from their rooftop, whilst the ‘dragons’ deliberated.

After a difficult deliberation, the ‘dragons’ crowned Adetola as the winner of this year’s Dragon’s Den event.

Everyone at Forward would like to say a huge congratulations to the Enterprise Support team, as well as our pitchers, for creating such an inspiring event. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for the three businesses.