Helen Heap - Biography

Helen is a self-employed social investment analyst and the founder of Seebohm Hill Ltd.

Current projects are focused on meeting the funding needs of community-based social enterprises by connecting them with investors who have risk capital and who are looking to build social enterprises from their earliest stages to create social value and achieve long-term sustainability.

Helen spent more than 2 decades working in the financial services industry as an analyst, equity salesperson and investor in Japanese equities for Abbey Life, Goldman Sachs and Sloane Robinson LLP. Seeking a change in direction, she spent 2011 working with a number of social enterprises, social investors and the Cabinet Office in roles involving the measurement and reporting of social value.

Helen’s most recent role was as Social Investment Manager for employment charity Tomorrow’s People.

She is co-author, with Robbie Davison, Director of CanCook CIC, of a paper “Can Social Finance Meet Social Need?” which suggests that currently available social finance models are not fit for purpose to fund community-based, early-stage social enterprises. The paper argues that a new type of finance is required to enable social enterprises to develop from the earliest stages in to sustainable organisations capable of delivering social value over the long term – we call this builder capital. The full paper can be found here

In order to examine more closely why the social finance gap exists and how builder capital will better meet the funding needs of innovative social enterprises, Helen and Robbie co-authored “Financing Social Enterprise: The Role of Builder Capital in Funding Innovation to Address Social Need”. A copy of this paper can be found here

More information on Helen’s career history to date can be found here: Helen Heap LinkedIn Profile