The Accelerate Cambridge coaching team

Luther’s mission to enable and nurture venture creation out of the University of Cambridge.

Accelerate Cambridge’s strategy is to help teams of entrepreneurs turn an idea into a business, to launch, grow and to scale-up quickly, leading on to a successfully exit. Accelerate Cambridge is part of an ecosystem of support for entrepreneurs in Cambridge, helping the University’s entrepreneurs, faculty, and local residents to navigate their way through the start-up process and find the resources they need.

As Programme Manager, Luther manages several programmes, projects, events, and activities. he has also supported over 350 ventures (around 1,000 entrepreneurs), a growing network of alumni ventures (over 290), an expanding network of associates, mentors (around 100) a team of 10 coaches and VIPs. In addition, he has provided similar support to the Santander Universities Growth Awards, MedTech programme, Barclays Eagle Labs residents, UoC International Student Office, AstraZeneca Mentors and the Royal Society of Chemistry and other department and societies across the University of Cambridge.

Luther is an altruist, social entrepreneur, and an environmental activist at heart. Over the years, he has led many environmental initiatives around the river Cam, combining volunteering and a social enterprising approach to organise many successful region wide river and beach clean-ups events, attracting over 1,200 volunteers.

Pantea Lotfian has more than 15 years’ experience in innovation and strategy consulting that spans various industries including manufacturing, engineering chemicals energy, pharmaceuticals and FMCGs. She is a the founder and director of strategy consultancy Camrosh, Non-Executive Director of Ridgeway Information, and has served on boards of the Science Council and Pepal ltd. She has a multidisciplinary background in both science and technology with a PhD in Biochemical engineering and MPhil in Technology policy. She has built and led teams of scientists and engineers to deliver consulting projects while providing inspirational and inclusive leadership, balancing the need for world-class expertise and approachability. Pantea has a proven track record of working with businesses, governmental and academic organisation to redefine their challenges and find new opportunities. She brings new insights and ways of thinking to complex, hard to address challenges. She also has considerable experience working with start-ups and SMEs in a mentoring and advisory capacity.

Babita Devi is an experienced coach and mentor with over 30 years of expertise in driving growth across various business domains, such as business development, strategic marketing, and commercialisation. Her extensive interaction with numerous business owners and founders is the foundation of her program, The Alignment Accelerator. This program is based on the idea that personal and business growth are interconnected, leading to inevitable success when they align.

Early in her career, Babita excelled in Enterprise Resource Planning, constructing pipelines for average sales of £1 million through well-defined strategies with measurable outcomes. She quickly progressed into management in her early 20s and went on to join the world’s largest optics company. There, she played a pivotal role in European Marketing, focusing on brand strategy, communications development, and implementation planning. Babita believes that effective marketing acts as the driving force behind all business areas.

Founding bStrategic in Australia in 2003, Babita’s focus on strategic marketing led to her transition into a Coach and Mentor role. Returning to the UK in 2006, she continued supporting large corporates and early-stage ventures across various sectors, including games, party, licensing, gaming, health and med tech, software, and education. Her tech venture in 2015 contributed to shaping The Alignment Accelerator, which helps founders understand the relationship between personal growth and business success.

Babita collaborates with multiple organisations as a Coach and Mentor, including Barclays Eagle Labs, Raising Starts, and Oxford Innovation Space. Alongside her business efforts, she has shared insights through lectures on entrepreneurial marketing for MBA and Business Studies students. Babita mentors the Masters in Entrepreneurship students at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, advises early-stage companies in Edtech and Games, and serves as an Advisor to a Venture Capital fund.

She’s also a Non-Executive Director for the Global Entrepreneurs Network UK, connecting entrepreneurs from 200 countries.

Babita’s enthusiasm lies in connecting people, fostering strategic partnerships, and cultivating networks of innovators, thinkers, and change-makers.

Reinhard Eschbach has more than 30 years’ significant practical experience, specifically focusing on digitalisation, digital marketing, business development, change management, and restructuring areas, such as e-commerce, product development and IT within several industries like travel, financial services, retail (food and other consumer goods).

He has worked in several senior executive roles up to board level, implementing cultural and organisational change with a strong focus on business improvement combined with key strengths include setting strategic directions, problem solving combined with sound technical understanding and the ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions.

A subject matter expert with the skills, knowledge and confidence, to lead and implement highly complex and sophisticated projects from start to finish being able to make effective judgement and prioritisation calls and influence at all levels. Several developments and implementations from new business ideas into a proper operation.

Tony is an entrepreneur with exits and an authority on corporate innovation, startups and entrepreneurship across sustainability, telecom, media, technology, healthcare and consumer brands.

His corporate experience includes being a member of the Executive Board of T-Mobile International & Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venturing T-Ventures as global EVP Business Development & Innovation and Group Managing Director of Bauer Digital for the €1.4 billion M&A and post-merger integration of EMAP. He has held senior international leadership positions in FMCG brand marketing (Nestle, Diageo).

His startup and growth stage experiences include being the co-founder of mobile entertainment company Mobilephonia, leading the turnaround and sale of digital services agency Bluewave (Maersk) and the leadership team for the $800 million IPO of Agency.com (NASDAQ: ACOM). Co-founder and the founding investor of accelerator Springboard (acquired by Techstars).

Tony was Founder and CEO of healthtech company Dupl, which provides context to biometric sensor data via communication and evidence-based sports psychology. Exit achieved via acqui-hire and IP sale. He is an investor and board advisor in mobile technology, digital media, gaming, nanotechnology, sustainability, cleantech, healthtech and software ventures with M&A exits to Oracle, Piksel, Nokia and Opentext.

He is currently an advisor to the UK government’s Global Entrepreneur Programme identifying the world’s leading IP-based startups for global expansion from a UK headquarters, a coach at Cambridge Accelerator and an advisor and mentor with Accelerate2030 to scale internationally the impact of entrepreneurs working towards achieving positive social and environmental change.

Tony has an MBA from Henley Business School specialising in corporate venturing, BSc (Hon) Physics & Electronic Systems, from Brunel University and is a certified NLP practitioner from the University of California.

Jack works as a programme administrator within the Entrepreneurship Centre, offering administrative support on several the Centre’s programmes with a primary focus on the Accelerate Cambridge programme.

Jack joined the Entrepreneurship Centre team in January 2022 with a background in administrative roles within the Education sector in and around Cambridge.

Kamilla Spark is a corporate finance specialist with more than two decades of experience as an advisor, investment manager, and non-executive director of large industrials and public sector institutions.

Prior to founding her own corporate finance advisory practice, Kamilla was a Director of Mezzanine Management, the largest mezzanine investor in Europe. Before that, she was a banker with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Senior Advisor to a closed-end, listed private equity fund. In these positions, she sourced, structured, implemented, and oversaw debt and equity investments in various companies from both public and private sectors.

Kamilla also has extensive experience as a non-executive board member. She was a Non-Executive Director of Giza Polish Ventures (a regional venture capital fund), Chair of the Audit Committee of PCC Exol (a leading Polish-American producer of industrial chemicals), and Non-Executive Director of Kety Group (a listed manufacturer of aluminium joinery and flexible packaging with more than EUR 1 billion in revenues). She also served her community as a Governor and member of the Audit Committee of Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge and as a Trustee and member of the Audit and Risk Committee of the National Union of Students UK (NUS UK). As a Fellow of the Judge Business School, she led finance workshops and taught Intrapreneurship Practice from 2018 to 2020. Kamilla has been a mentor in the Master of Studies in Entrepreneurship programme and at Accelerate Cambridge since 2018.

Kamilla received her MBA (Finance and Accounting) from Columbia University Business School in New York. She has been a UK Chartered Director and Fellow of The Institute of Directors since 2010.

Now an independent consultant, Gaynor was previously Vice-President of Business Development at AstraZeneca. Her UK and US teams were responsible for identifying, evaluating and negotiating opportunities in the areas of Oncology, Infection, Personalised Healthcare and Science & Technology Licensing.

Gaynor joined AstraZeneca in 2007 from Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) where she was the Vice-President of Business Development. Before joining CAT she worked at Bespak and at Bio Products Laboratory.

She has a wide range of experience in healthcare organisations, including licensing, merger, disposal and company acquisition. She has worked for large and small organisations, public and private sector and has established startup and joint venture businesses.

Gaynor has a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Manchester Business School. She lives near Cambridge with her husband and has three children.

Nitin is a general management executive and CEO with operational and commercial skills gained from developing strategy and implementing change/turnround programmes involving design innovation, operational and manufacturing excellence in the UK and Internationally.

He has worked on several acquired businesses for a private company, developing a culture of efficiency, innovation and an entrepreneurial attitude to growing the business and its markets, both in the UK and Internationally.

A significant part of Nitin’s early work experience was gained from working with General Motor in its various global operations in Europe, Asia and North America, reaching the position of European Powertrain Manager based in its European Head Office in Zurich, leading design, innovation and manufacturing.

Nitin is a graduate in manufacturing from the University of Bath and a fellow in manufacturing management at Cass Business School. Nitin is married with two daughters and enjoys playing golf and watching sports.