Mr. Jerry Allen

As UCL Director of Entrepreneurship, Jerry is an active ecosystem builder to nurture the entrepreneurial talent that exists among students, researchers and staff at University College London.  

He aims to discover best practice across the landscape and is currently exercised by social impact and community entrepreneurship as well as purpose driven entrepreneurship. His ethos is to share the learning for the benefit of wider society. 

The current focus remains on developing entrepreneurial mindsets amongst the doctoral student and researcher community within UCL. 

In total, over 400 new graduate businesses were started at UCL between 2014 and 2022. Collectively they have raised over £300 million in investment and currently employ over 1700 jobs.  

A founder of 7 startups, Jerry has created systems to support entrepreneurs, each year this generates 70 plus new startups building a growing community at BaseKX the UCL dedicated incubation space.  

In 2019, Jerry was invited to advise on refugee entrepreneurship at the UN and remains committed to supporting refugee entrepreneurs currently through the Global Entrepreneurship Network UK Restart Ukraine project. 

Previously, he created several successful European Projects, raising over €6m to promote innovation and enterprise latterly amongst social innovation and entrepreneurship amongst refugee groups.  

Ever mindful of growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Jerry is keen to talk to potential funders who can financially support UCL to better open entrepreneurial opportunities up to underrepresented groups and achieve the biggest possible impact.