Individual

Director's Choice Award

This special recognition is selected directly by Foundervine. It celebrates an outstanding alumnus from our community who exemplifies the transformative impact of support when it is given at the right time. The recipient represents the very best of what our founders can achieve - building innovative businesses, creating opportunity, and strengthening the UK economy. This award shines a spotlight on the power of backing underrepresented entrepreneurs and the extraordinary results that follow.

Future40 Members

The Director’s Choice Award is closed to public voting. The final winner will be announced based on voting held internally amongst the Foundervine staff.

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David Adjei
Co-founder, AICHITECT
Henry McNeill-Njoku
Co-founder, Known Source
Lilijan Sulejmanovic
Founder, Bardo
Nuria Manuel
Founder & CEO, Veriom
Tendai Moyo
Founder & CEO, Ruka hair
David Adjei

David Adjei

David Adjei is the co-founder of AICHITECT, an AI-powered platform that helps construction teams de-risk projects by predicting issues before they escalate - saving time and cost on every project. Before launching AICHITECT, David led Cognition, his own architectural studio, for a decade, delivering award-winning projects while pioneering tech-driven design practices. He has also taught architecture at university level and served on the RIBA Council, giving him a unique vantage point at the intersection of practice, academia, and professional policy.
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Henry McNeill-Njoku

Henry McNeill-Njoku

Henry McNeill-Njoku is the co-founder of Known Source, a ground-breaking community-first marketplace reshaping the future of second-hand fashion. Named a Vogue Business 100 Innovator, Henry has over a decade of experience driving cultural change in the resale industry - shaping how consumers engage with pre-loved clothing and elevating second-hand fashion to the forefront of culture.
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Lilijan Sulejmanovic

Lilijan Sulejmanovic

Lili is an operator, investor and entrepreneur whose career blends global experience in consulting and private equity with pioneering diaspora investment in Bosnia. More recently her focus has been on unlocking capital for founders and communities from forced-migration backgrounds. Drawing on her own experience of displacement, she brings a unique refugee-lens to investment, working to catalyse funding flows into ventures that advance refugee and newcomer economic and social empowerment. Her leadership bridges private capital with social impact, mobilising resources not only to grow businesses but to transform narratives, proving that investing in refugee and newcomer talent is both a moral imperative and a compelling economic opportunity.
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Nuria Manuel

Nuria Manuel

Nuria is the Founder & CEO of Veriom - the AI brain for cybersecurity. Veriom continuously scans your cloud, code, and systems to detect vulnerabilities, trace them to their root cause, and surface the remediation. No more false positives. No more fragmented tools. Just proactive security that works - autonomously. Nuria has spent over a decade in fault detection, infrastructure auditing, software vulnerabilities, quality assurance and cybersecurity across manufacturing, enterprise and mid-market tech, and high regulated industries like financial services and healthcare.
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Tendai Moyo

Tendai Moyo

Tendai is a co-founder and CEO at Ruka Hair, which she started after being exhausted by her own laundry list of horror stories when it came to purchasing hair extensions: everything from an allergic reaction to the silicon used to hide the counterfeit nature of Aliexpress hair, to it just… never arriving. She’s creating Ruka to become the go-to brand for Black women globally when it comes to their hair – a company challenging a historically unregulated industry to create higher quality and better performing hair solutions without compromising on health or ethics.
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Other awards

Tech Innovation of the Year
Changemaker of the Year
Social Impact Leader of the Year
Consumer Brand of the Year
Businesswoman of the Year
Rising Star of the Year
Ally of the Year
Director’s Choice Award
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