Oli Barrett MBE

Oli is a co-founder of Cospa, a social innovation agency working with companies and causes to create cross-sector campaigns which make money and make a difference. A recent example is Volunteer It Yourself, which helps young people to fix their own youth clubs, with Wickes, the DIY chain. He started Tenner (now run by Young Enterprise), the UK's largest schools enterprise scheme, which has challenged over 150,000 pupils to see what they can achieve in a month, starting with £10. He brought speed-networking to the UK and has led 11 international trade missions to the US, India and Brazil helping British companies (in health, clean-tech and web) to explore business opportunities. Oli’s entrepreneurial career started as a student and has included an events business in nine cities, an international language practice website & a sock subscription website. He spent two years on the Prime Minister's Council on Social Action & co-founded the national, business-funded campaign StartUp Britain.