Inspirational entrepreneur and influential business leader, Dr Isabella Moore CBE, is the founder and director of The Olderpreneur Alliance, which champions the needs of older entrepreneurs. Isabella also chairs COMTEC, a prominent translation service provider to exporters in several industries, which she founded.
Isabella made history as the first female President of the British Chambers of Commerce and Vice-President of the European Chambers of Commerce. She was a Chairman of the Confederation of West Midlands Chambers of Commerce and CEO of CILT, the National Centre for Languages. An advocate for women's enterprise, she chaired the National Women’s Enterprise Panel and presided over the Eurochambres Women’s Network.
Isabella was a guest speaker at the May 2024 Coventry & Warwickshire Champions and, in this blog, she reflects on her impressive career.
I suppose, I can describe myself as an olderpreneur. I set up a business, Comtec, in my 30s, developed it, and got to the point where I sold it to an American owned company and went off to do other things.
After several years, I bought the business back, this time with my daughter Sophie. She's now the managing director, her husband is the technical director, and I chair the board. It's now a multimillion £ company that provides high tech language services to industry.
At the age of 60 I found myself with a very different set of problems than I did when I set the business up in my 30s. I had grandchildren and I wanted to be involved in their lives. I had an elderly mother who lived in Warsaw, Poland, and I needed to go back and forth to Poland to look after her because her health was failing. My husband had retired, and he didn't understand why I wanted to carry on working.
I think at the age of 60, I had an identity crisis. What was I going to do for the rest of my life. I became interested in this topic and thought, well, what happens if you're back in business again, or want to set up a business again, in later life? Are the challenges different to those that you had when you're in your 30s?
With the encouragement of Professor Mark Hart, at Aston Business School, I decided to do a doctorate on the gendered aspects of later life entrepreneurship. What I wanted to understand was, is the situation different for women than it is for men?
What I discovered is that society has stereotypical views about older people. For example, that older women should be looking after grandchildren or elderly parents and always be available, whereas for men, it's very much the golf course or fishing, but certainly not setting up a business.
What I also found is that most older people, if they've accessed business support for advice on how to set up a business, felt they were patronised and not taken seriously and felt uncomfortable being interviewed by or supported by people who were often 20 or 30 years younger than them.
My findings also showed, for example, that women showed more resilience when faced with the inevitable problems of setting up a business, because they had faced many different circumstances in their lives and were more used to change.
I felt passionate about the fact that there are a lot of people over 50 that have the skills and experience, the age capital, that they're not utilising. This is demonstrated by the fact that over fifties, if they applied for paid employment, often went for jobs for which they were vastly overqualified, only because they had lost confidence in their abilities.
So based on my research findings, I decided to set up The Olderpreneur Alliance, which is a community interest company. The aim of our organisation, through our unique Later Creator programme, is to support older people into entrepreneurship, or at least to consider this option, because not everybody is going to run a business or want to set up a business.
When it comes to supporting older people, I think there needs to be a review of all the existing business support programmes. They're not geared towards support of older people and understanding their particular requirements.
I think we need to celebrate the success of older people in the same way we need to celebrate the success of women in business. In the media, older people are often portrayed as at the beginning of the big decline, and it shouldn't be like that. There are a lot of people out there doing a lot of amazing things later in life and I think the media needs to have a role in promoting that.
With women and older people, we need to raise awareness that their work and their businesses are a huge contribution to our economy. We need these people in our economy, and we need to ensure that their efforts are highlighted.
I was the first woman President of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and I was always interested in this intersection between government policy and small business, and so I became more involved in promoting these causes.
I remember when I would attend Chamber events and the only other woman was serving the sandwiches! Things have changed hugely since then, but we want to continue supporting other women.
At the time we were still in the European Union. The UK always promoted a more pragmatic viewpoint than in Brussels. I travelled a lot to Brussels to lobby the Commission and I became a Vice President of Eurochambres, the European body of chambers of commerce.
The then minister for the Department of Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, commissioned the first report on the state of women's enterprise in the UK. It was twice as likely for a woman to set up a business in the United States than it was here. This has now slightly improved, but there is a long way yet to go. There are more women in public positions and in government, but in business it's still a lot fewer.
In my role as President of BCC, and in light of my languages background, I was able to promote the importance of language learning in schools which, in my opinion, is still very much behind other countries. It is wrong to think that English suffices. You can buy something in English, but you can't sell in English. For that you need foreign language skills. It should be a priority for our new government to ensure language learning is a fundamental part of the school curriculum. Language skills are an element of competitive advantage for this country.
Because of my interest in the intersection of government policy with business requirements, it seemed like a natural step, when I reached a certain age, to then support older people into business. It seemed like the right thing to do, and I feel really passionate about it. I understand the problems older people face. I can talk therefore from the heart, as I've been through it all myself.
CW Champions provides an opportunity to meet people at different points in their careers. When I attended, I met people from very small businesses and those from much larger businesses. It’s a great opportunity to network and make connections. Speakers and interviewees are from different industries and different walks of life, and I think that just makes it so interesting. The diversity of people being interviewed at Champions events is what inspired me to become a speaker myself. We need to celebrate the diverse community of Coventry & Warwickshire.