VEUVE CLICQUOT REVEALS 2025 BOLD WOMAN AWARDS SHORTLIST

• The Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award celebrates bold female entrepreneurs and leaders who are driving business and innovation.

• CEO of London Stock Exchange, Dame Julia Hoggett DBE, Chief Executive Officer of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Anne Aslett and the founder of Little Moons, Vivien Wong are among the shortlist.

• Winners of the award will be announced at the end of April.

Veuve Clicquot has announced the finalists for the 2025 Bold Woman and Bold Future Awards. Now in its 53rd year, the awards are the longest-running international recognition of female entrepreneurship, celebrating exceptional UK women in business. Bold by Veuve Clicquot supports and amplifies the voices of women business leaders, inspiring future generations to be even more ambitious.

The Bold Woman Award honours exceptional and audacious women who have demonstrated both institutional and personal success. The finalists, chosen by an independent panel of judges, are:

Dame Julia Hoggett, DBE: Julia Hoggett joined the London Stock Exchange Group in April 2021 and is CEO of London Stock Exchange plc and Head of Digital and Securities Markets for LSEG. Despite a challenging environment, Julia’s leadership has resulted in the London Stock Exchange remaining a leading global exchange and the number one venue in Europe for raising equity capital, with more raised in London in 2024 than the next three European exchanges combined.

Vivien Wong: founded Little Moons in 2010, and over the past 15 years has transformed it into a globally disruptive ice cream brand. Today, Little Moons is available in 36 countries worldwide, and was honoured with the Queen award for export in 2022. Vivien attributes the success to bold, disruptive thinking, and audaciously taking on the big players like Unilever, General Mills and other global corporations who have dominated the ice cream sector for the last forty years.

Anne Aslett: As CEO of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Anne has grown the charity’s annual global revenues from roughly $1 million to $30 million. This has enabled the Foundation to grow significantly and in 2023 it dispersed the largest value of grants in its history, reaching more than 280,000 people in 42 countries.

The Bold Future Award celebrates inspirational and ambitious up-and-coming female entrepreneurs. The finalists were chosen from a field of hundreds of applicants:

Ayesha Ofori: Ayesha is the founder and CEO of Propelle, the UK’s first female-focused investment platform designed to empower women to build financial confidence and wealth. An experienced wealth manager and former executive director at Goldman Sachs, Ayesha managed over half a billion pounds for ultra-high-net-worth clients before launching Propelle.

Insiya Jafferjee: Insiya is the co-founder and CEO of Shellworks, a company breaking the reliance on petroleum plastics through its innovation Vivomer, a world-first sustainable packaging material. If nature made plastic, this would be it.  After working at Apple and learning how to manufacture at scale, Insiya started Shellworks to solve the plastic waste crisis by creating materials that behave like plastic in use, but without creating adverse health or waste impacts.

      Veuve Clicquot 2025 Bold Shortlist – Anne Aslett, Nina Mohanty, Julia Hoggett, Vivien Wong, Ayesha Ofori, Insiya Jafferjee

Nina Mohanty: Nina is the founder and CEO of Bloom Money, a fintech company creating financial tools for immigrant communities. Before Bloom, Nina worked for the Obama Administration at the US Embassy in London and built products at Klarna, Starling Bank, and Mastercard. Bloom Money’s flagship product, Bloom Circles, digitises traditional community savings clubs, providing secure and accessible tools to help immigrants build financial resilience and generational wealth.

The 2025 winners will walk in the footsteps of some of the UK’s most impressive business women including: Tracy Blackwell, CEO of Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) in 2024, Professor Sarah Gilbert in 2021 for her leadership in developing the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine, plus Selfridges Group CEO Anne Pitcher in 2020. The Bold Awards are part of an international programme taking place across 27 countries which have so far recognised 450 women leading in their individual fields.

Veuve Clicquot has long been dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship and female leadership, a commitment that dates back to 1805. Madame Clicquot, a trailblazer, took over the House after her husband’s passing, ensuring its success, innovating industry techniques still widely used today, and defying the odds.

Inspired by her courageous spirit, the Bold Woman and Bold Future awards judge candidates on whether they uphold Madame Clicquot’s legacy of audacious female boldness.

Jean-Marc Gallot, President of Veuve Clicquot, said: “Following in the footsteps of Madame Clicquot, these groundbreaking leaders are redefining business excellence. Their achievements go far beyond profits to inspiring future female entrepreneurs. Whether it’s driving financial empowerment, tackling global challenges like plastic waste, or leading major organisations, they demonstrate that doing things never done before leads to both commercial success and meaningful societal change.”

Bridget Lea, VP of Snap Inc. and judge for the awards added:  “In a society where women often have to work twice as hard as men, face systemic barriers, shorter tenures in leadership roles, and less funding, these remarkable women aren’t just pushing forward, they’re paving the way for every woman who follows.

“This year’s shortlist is an incredible group of women, creating solutions to some of the largest problems we face as a planet. They are pioneers in their sectors, blazing a trail for others to follow.”