CPD and graduate startups
Queen Mary’s entrepreneurial culture extends beyond its spinouts and business partnerships, with an improved and thriving student enterprise.
Queen Mary has a long record of supporting its students with their business endeavours. Through QUEST, Queen Mary runs several programmes and sources of funding to aid entrepreneurs in getting their idea off the ground and turn it into a thriving business. Past successes include 'Too Good to Go', a social enterprise that enables restaurants with unused food at the end of the day to sell it to customers at a reduced price.
Inspiring entrepreneurs with QHack and QIcubator
Starting a business can be daunting, particularly for students and graduates taking their first steps into entrepreneurship.
Through programmes such as QHack and QIncubator, Queen Mary helps students develop ideas, test concepts and build entrepreneurial skills. Participants gain practical experience, work with mentors and explore how innovation can be translated into new ventures and opportunities.
These programmes help students build the confidence, networks and experience needed to take an idea from concept to reality while developing valuable skills for future careers.
Empowering graduate start-ups
Through QUEST, Queen Mary supports students to start something new. Recent Design Engineering graduate Sarah Bailey's startup, Even, designs ultra-low cost period wear that is transforming the lives of some of the world's most vulnerable people.
An estimated 2.8 billion days are lost each year by people who can't afford period products, forcing them to improvise unhygienic, unsuitable or embarrassing solutions. Sarah and her team have used their design engineering knowledge to radically rethink how reusable period underwear is manufactured, putting it in the reach of the global majority. They estimate that Even will return 1 million period days to menstruators in 2025.
In October 2024 Sarah and her business partners Aurusha Kharas and Anushka Mahesh secured £12,500 funding from the Ford Family Foundation through their business competition, Ignite. We are immensely proud of Sarah and to have been part of Even's story.