Lucy Armstrong

Lucy is chief executive of The Alchemists, which works with high growth mid-corporate businesses to accelerate their development and success. Her experience ranges from funding start up and early stage manufacturing businesses in the North East through to mergers and disposals of international operations.

She is the first chair of the Independent Professional Standards Council for the Asset Based Finance industry, chair of the Enterprise Research Centre’s Advisory board and deputy chair of NCFE, the national qualifications organisation.

She chaired the CBI’s national Small and Medium Business Forum from 2010 to 2012 and Capital for Enterprise until 2013. She has worked in a high security prison, been on the board of Liberty, the human rights organisation and is a former chair of Northumbria University. She is a visiting professor at Newcastle University.

She was educated at Oxford, holds an MBA and a MSc in forensic psychology and criminology. Her spare time is frittered away with a trans-Atlantic think tank and walking along Northumberland’s deserted beaches. She has recently learnt to dive and is seeking ways to combine this with her other hobbies of chainsawing and church bellringing.