Julia Elliott Brown

Enter the Arena

Julia Elliott Brown is a former founder turned board chair and strategic advisor - and the two are not unrelated. Having built, funded and scaled a business of her own, she now spends her working life inside other founders' boardrooms, doing the things she wishes someone had done for her.

Julia chairs and sits on the boards of scaling companies at exactly the point where growth gets complicated: when governance needs to grow up, founders need someone who'll actually push back, and the decisions on the table start carrying real weight. She's worked with more than 1,400 founders since 2016 on fundraising, board-building and leadership - helping them raise the right money from the right people, then build the board that can actually handle what comes after.

She currently chairs the Advisory Board at Focused For Business, previously chaired the board at sports-tech venture Feldspar through its first capital raise, and has advised the boards of fast-scaling businesses including The Trouble Club and Not In The Guidebooks. She's also co-founder of XX Invest, a growing membership connecting professional women with the founders and capital shaping the female-led business ecosystem.

What founders, investors and the wider ecosystem tend to notice: she's commercially grounded, refreshingly direct, and has genuinely sat on both sides of the boardroom table - as the founder who had to convince the room, and now as the person sitting in it. Expect straight answers, a fair amount of laughing, and at least one uncomfortable truth you'll quietly recognise.