Griselda Togobo In Conversation With...

Episode 8. In Conversation With Lara Morgan - International Women's Day Special

Listen on

Episode notes

Join us to inspire personal change, by accessing the connections, community and content that will help you keep breaking through your personal barriers.  Together, we will keep pushing the boundaries, challenging the status quo and supporting other women as we achieve our own goals.

Lara Morgan is a British entrepreneur with a track record of delivering exceptional accelerated growth. Her investment strategy in wellbeing products primarily is pinned to improving life’s journey. Investing as a family office she has a portfolio of seven consumer services businesses which she works to drive sales, leadership and innovation. She is an inspirational leader with a legacy of building world-class teams and aligning organisations behind a clear strategy. She practices the art of selling and creating win-win customer partnerships for her brands 24/7. Her specific expertise is in sales strategy, customer insight and brand development, multichannel and multisite management plus organic or M&A / partnership-driven expansion.   Lara founded her first business, Pacific Direct, in 1991 at the age of just 23. Having arrived in the UK from Hong Kong with little or no hotel experience, Lara quickly grew Pacific Direct into a specialist global supplier of luxury high-end brands for five-star hotels. Seventeen years later, she sold Pacific Direct for £20 million. At Pacific Direct she was involved in multiple disciplines from luxury brand licensing, marketing, retail operations to commercial and private label development. She has also managed and owned factories in Czech and China.   Working with extremely large organisations as well as small start-ups, she acquired valuable sector experience in speciality retail, brand merchandising, consumer health, education, wellbeing travel, leisure and hospitality.   Lara is a proud mother of three girls and a committed volunteer and philanthropist. She is actively engaged with various global non-profits as a board member or advisor. She is a world-class engaging speaker only on subjects where she can bring direct experience and shared lessons. She has also commented live on current affairs and business issues with Sky and BBC News; has been a finalist in Ernst Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award three times and a finalist in the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year Award. In 2009 Lara received the much-coveted Cranfield University Entrepreneur Alumna Award. She is a published author of the Amazon best-selling business book “More Balls Than Most” and is a co-founder of Start Up Britain. Taking all this in her stride, she also manages to train for charity bike rides and triathlon and came 10th in the 2011 World Triathlon Championships in Beijing.