By Jules Lavallee
Sofia (Sophie) Azam is an ex-Government Education Regulator with a passion for alternative learning and training that is accessible for all sections of society. Having spent nearly 5 years within education regulation and over 8 years in education consultancy regulating vocational courses, Sofia went onto set-up three start-ups that provide cutting edge educational initiatives and products to equip young entrepreneurs, new start-up founders and innovators with the right skills, knowledge and traits to succeed in their business aspirations.
Sofia is the Founder of Skills4Startups® (S4S) – UK’s first mobile business school that produces high-impact roadshows and interactive skills-centric workshops to give founders the best chance to grow their businesses and remain financially sustainable. Sofia believes that key skills underpinned by educational standards can truly empower the start-up community to fulfill their business Ambitions.
Sofia is on a 10-year journey to advocate for ALL start-ups to dare to innovate without the risk of failure at early inception, by learning from each other as a circular economy. Finally, Sofia has also set-up a new digital network hub for start-ups (EduEco+) that will be providing on-demand learning tools for new and experienced start-up founders in 2025. This virtual system will help start-ups to progress successfully in their business journeys.
How excited are you for the Belfast Roadshow?
2025 is the year for Skills4Startups® Festival Roadshow UK to champion and advocate the start-ups UK community outside England. I am very excited to announce that Skills4Startups® will be delivering its vision for ultimate innovation for start-ups to the Northern Ireland Start-ups community, in February 2025 (Q1). We have already started the roadshow production and discussions with a very high-profile university in Belfast that will be potentially partnering up on this incredible one day of empowerment, learning and insightful talks on growing and supporting more start-ups across Northern Ireland.
Can you share some of your partnerships?
At this early stage of the production phase, we can share that a very prominent university in Belfast wants to host Skills4Startups® 3-fold strategy programme on high-impactful business leadership talks on the latest trends and statistics across Northern Ireland, showcasing positive case studies from the Northern Ireland start-ups ecosystem – as well as our 8 skills-centric interactive workshops delivered by educational and business experts. We are delighted to also be working with BeeCome more, a fantastic organisation, based in Northern Ireland, that focuses on leadership skills, and is one of our trusted partners that sits on our Startups Business Advisory Group (SBAG). Beecome More will be co-developing another impactful educational workshop on the importance of sales growth for early inception Start-ups alongside Skills4Startups®. Sales is such an important skill that Founders and entrepreneurs need to invest in if they want to lead high performing start-up businesses. We would like to see many more start-ups become financially sustainable through quality sales strategies.
What is your vision for bringing your roadshow to the US?
In 2025, Skills4Startups® vision is to start the groundwork to create and build Skills4Startups® USA (an independent subsidiary of Skills4Startups®) and to start negotiations with the USA start-ups system on dynamic ways of collaboration and combining meaningful partnerships to grow the start-ups space effectively through the power of education and core skills. Our key objective is to meet our commitment to producing 100, 00O financially viable Start-ups globally by 2034 with the necessary skills to grow and positively impact the global economy.
“2023 Finalist of the Institute of Directors’ Director of the Year Awards – Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Category”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-a-empowering-startups
