2025 Bionow - Yorkshire Bio-Partnering

Tracy Brabin is the Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire, who was re-elected with more than 50% of the vote in May 2024. Tracy has served as the first Mayor of West Yorkshire since 2021 and was the first ever woman Metro Mayor in England. She Chairs the UK Mayors Network, the group of 12 Metro Mayors in England. Durning her re-election campaign, Tracy pledged to improve access to culture and grassroots sports for all children, to develop a new strategy to reduce serious violence, and to create a 'region of learning'. In her first term, Tracy took the decision to franchise the bus network and is committed to having spades in the ground for a new tram system by 2028. Prior to her election as Mayor, Tracy was the Member if Parliament for Batley and Spen, from 2016 to 2021 and spent three decades working in the creative industries.

A biomedical scientist by background, I joined a healthtech startup as the 5^th employee. I helped build out the customer base and quickly became obsessed with startups and technology. I then did venture building in Australia where we acquired intellectual property from universities and built businesses around it. I ran some of our medtech spin outs, where we raised capital, ran trials and had a team of engineers who did the product development. Covid hit and we pivoted, managing to secure a $38M Federal contract to stand up a supply chain of emergency ventilators from scratch in 9 months.
In 2022 I got the opportunity to join Mercia Ventures based out of London office. Since joining the fund I have invested in and worked with 8 companies supporting their growth.
At Mercia, I am primarily focused on investments in technology investments across Health and Life Sciences, and Enterprise Software at the early stage.