Entrepreneurship & Scaling Startups with Young Founders

Investor | Forbes 30 Under 30 | Woman of the Year in Business and Innovation

Sharndre Kushor was 18 years old when she co-founded New Zealand based unicorn, Crimson Education, which recently surpassed a valuation of over $1B. Her life passion is helping people to discover their capabilities, confidence and potential. During her time as Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer of Crimson Education, Sharndre has helped turn a small start-up into a globally renowned education behemoth with students and teachers in all corners of the globe. Sharndre was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and was named Woman of the Year in Business and Innovation. Now, 10 years on from founding Crimson, Sharndre has worked with young leaders and founders across edtech, fintech, retail and ecommerce in New Zealand, Australia, the US, Japan and the UK to scale their businesses to achieve over $150M in annual revenue and build high performance teams of over 850 full-time staff. Alongside her work in the start-up space, Sharndre is a philanthropist. After leaving Crimson, she started The One Billion, a New Zealand registered charity that aims to improve 1 billion lives over the next 50 years.

CEO, Crimson Global Academy Technology I People I Global Startups

Penelope is the CEO of Crimson Global Academy. She is a coach and experienced people leader passionate about building high-growth, scalable, and successful organisations. Her track record of actively partnering with founders in executive positions and on advisory boards has led to organisation's unprecedented impact.

Penelope brings with her over 15 years of experience working with some of the fastest-growing global startups (Xero, Vend, noissue, Crimson Education) in people, culture, and operational executive roles.