Karen Davies is the founder and chief executive of Purple Shoots Business Lending Ltd, a Welsh not-for-profit Responsible Finance Provider which she set up 5 years ago to tackle poverty, unemployment and financial exclusion in Wales through encouraging entrepreneurship and independence. Purple Shoots does this in two ways:
– offering small loans to individuals seeking to set up or run small businesses who are struggling to find the funding from anywhere else.
– establishing and facilitating self-reliant groups which bring together people left behind by the economy and encouraging them to share and develop skills and experiment with income generating ideas which may lead to employment or self-employment.
Before starting Purple Shoots she had 10 years’ experience in an investment bank, 10 years in a small manufacturing business, a few years as a self-employed translator and prior to that she worked in the City of London for one of the big four firms of accountants. She holds an MA from Oxford University in Geography and an MSc in Economic Development. This “portfolio” career finally makes sense for what she is doing now in Purple Shoots!