Alice Bentinck

So I'm one of the co-founders and almost three years ago now I took over as CEO.

I was born and brought up in the UK, in the south of the UK in a little national park called the New Forest.

It's called the New Forest but it's about a thousand years old as much of Europe is.

Before I founded EF, I started my career as a management consultant at McKinsey, did two years there.

That was actually where I met my incredible co-founder, Matt Clifford.

We were in the same joining class, sort of financial crash, global financial crash time, so 2009.

And we met, became great friends and then left after two years to start EF and I've been doing this ever since.

And so I moved to California three years ago and I've got a husband and two little kids.

Yeah, that's right.

We could have waved at each other across the channel.

Yeah, that's fun.

So my father is military.

He's a Royal Marine, which is one of the kind of elite special forces.

And my mother was a doctor.

I was back home at Christmas where my parents live and

I suddenly realized that growing up, I've got 10 aunts and uncles, no one works in the business.

Everyone worked either for the state, was a teacher, was a doctor, was military.

And so growing up, business was not really, you know, and startups definitely not, but even just like working in a business was quite a extraordinary thing.

uh and i think one of the big moments for me was um when i was at high school there was something called young enterprise that you got the opportunity to run your own startup while you were at school uh actually because i was at home over christmas i um found my teenage diaries which a are incredibly embarrassing and no one must ever read them um but b would you give them to me god no no

Um, but the bit is I'm either obsessed with like, you know, friendship dynamics or boys or, or the other thing that I write out length about is my complete obsession with this startup that I'm building at school.