Our Patrons
Our Patrons are a small group of individuals and organisations who believe in our mission and play a key role in supporting The SuperScalers as a not for profit organisation and our founders as they scale.
Gill Pearson
Gill began her entrepreneurial journey at Newberry International over 25 years ago. Recognising the early rise of smoothies, she created the first pre-portioned frozen smoothie sachet in 2002, transforming an inefficient process into a scalable, market-shaping innovation. She went on to build and design two UK manufacturing facilities equipped with bespoke, industry-leading machinery, enabling world-class production of premium frozen fruit, vegetables, smoothies, and chocolate-enrobed fruit products. Today, the company operates as a privately owned, nine-figure revenue business supplying more than 35 countries worldwide.
James Harrison
James Harrison is the Founder and CEO of Cycle Pharmaceuticals. Cycle provides drug products to treat children born with rare genetic conditions and is headquartered in Cambridge, with 2025 revenues of over $200 million.
Prior to founding Cycle in 2012, James spent 3 years as CEO of Archimica, an international pharmaceutical manufacturing business with manufacturing sites in the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy. Prior to Archimica, James was a Managing Director at TowerBrook Capital Partners, and a Partner at Soros Private Equity Partners.
Mia Drennan
Mia is a seasoned banking professional with expertise across institutional debt, private credit and global restructuring transactions, with more than three decades in Debt Capital Markets.
Her pioneering idea was to create an independent “white glove” loan agency and trustee business to help creditors recover value from defaulted institutional debt. Under her leadership, GLAS has grown to 450+ professionals across ten countries and fourteen offices, with $850+ billion in assets under administration.
She has led the organisation through a partial buyout by Levine Leichtman Capital Partners in 2022 and subsequent investment from Oakley Capital and La Caisse in 2025, and was recognised with the 2025 EY Entrepreneur of the Year UK award.
Sumir Karayi
Sumir Karayi is a founder, investor and philanthropist who built 1E organically into a global enterprise software company serving many of the world’s largest organisations. Carlyle partnered with the business in 2021, and in 2024 TeamViewer agreed to acquire it at a $720m enterprise value. He now supports ambitious founders building significant companies.
A growing part of Sumir’s work is focused on supporting women through the full journey from education to entrepreneurship to scale. Through the Fair Chance Foundation, he has supported the University of Warwick’s work in India helping young women and disadvantaged students make better-informed choices about higher education. He also supports Angel Academe, which backs female-founded early-stage technology companies.
