Two women entrepreneurs from Northern Ireland win national award to make the world a better place

Two female entrepreneurs from Northern Ireland are among 50 from across the UK to win an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award, which go to trailblazers who are developing novel solutions to major social, environmental and economic challenges.

Susan Kelly from Londonderry and Michelle Connor from Lisburn will each benefit from a £50,000 grant, one-to-one business coaching, and a suite of networking, role modelling, and training opportunities.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day (Wednesday), the awards reflect the government’s ambition to give more support to women innovators and business leaders.

Susan, co-founder of Respiratory Analytics, designed an AI-led respiratory device called aflo for those with asthma, after witnessing her partner and two children being hospitalised due to life-threatening asthma attacks. Almost 90% of sufferers do not master the right technique to get the best benefit from their inhalers, aflo™ has been designed to do this automatically for them.

Michelle Connor, co-founder of Kinva, who having struggled to find the right UK health therapies for her daughter’s rare genetic disorder, has created an innovative AI platform that connects health therapists from around the world with potential clients.

The flagship Women in Innovation Awards is a key part of Innovate UK’s commitment to boosting the number of women entrepreneurs. Innovate UK will give all 50 trailblazers £50,000 and bespoke mentoring and coaching to enable them to scale-up their businesses.

Now in its sixth year, the competition drew a record number of 920 applications from women business leaders, 10% up from last year, reflecting the growing number of women-led businesses in the UK (according to the Rose Review Progress Report 2023, 20% of all UK businesses are now led by all-women teams).

Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme continues to support high-potential women business leaders from diverse backgrounds. With a passion to support underrepresented innovation talent, 22% of the winners are Black, Asian, or from another ethnic minority group and 12% have identified as disabled.

Susan said: “It's a terrifying thing to witness a family member having a life-threatening asthma attack. Inhaled medications are the cornerstone of asthma management and I've seen how difficult it is to get inhaler technique right to optimise these drugs, which is why this innovation was born. It's been very hard to keep this Innovate UK Award a secret and I can't wait to get started!”

Congratulating Northern Ireland’s Women in Innovation Award winners, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris explained: “Susan and Michelle should be incredibly proud of being named as two out of 50 winners of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards for using their personal experiences to develop and create solutions and benefiting the world around them.

“It’s fantastic to see such great ambition and innovation recognised, and it is important that we continue to encourage and reward ideas and skills like this, to inspire women not just from Northern Ireland, but from across the United Kingdom.”

Emily Nott, head of equality, diversity and inclusion programmes at Innovate UK, continued: “Each year I am blown away by the brilliant ideas and talent we uncover through our Women in Innovation programme. Despite these challenging economic times, this year’s winners have shown great leadership, passion and resilience in driving their innovations forward. Innovate UK will work alongside them now to ensure they have the resources and support required to grow and scale their businesses, while encouraging a new generation of women to get involved in innovation, pursue their ambitions and transform our economy and society.”

Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, added: “The Innovate UK Women in Innovation programme is an important part of our many activities to make a real difference to the talent and skills pipeline for UK business innovation by inspiring, involving and investing in greater diversity. I warmly congratulate all the Women in Innovation Award winners and look forward to keeping in touch as they progress.”