Podcast · Business

Femme & Fortune

by Ayesha Ofori · English · Business

👉 A podcast about how wealth is actually built. Hosted by Ayesha Ofori, it explores the real stories behind successful women. The decisions, risks, instincts and turning points that don’t make it into headlines. Each episode goes beyond the surface to look at how money, mindset and life experience

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 59 min
Latest: 6 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026 · 13 min

I Got a Pay Rise and Took Home LESS Money

Are you paying more tax than you need to? There's a good chance you are, not because of anything dodgy, but because nobody ever explained the rules.In this Femme and Fortune deep dive, former Goldman Sachs wealth adviser Ayesha Ofori breaks down the legal tax allowances the wealthy use every year, and why you don't need to be rich to use them too. Every pound you legally keep is a pound you can invest and grow for years.Inspired by Ayesha's podcast conversation with Charlotte Baroukh, the accountant known as the Tax Queen on Instagram, this video covers:🎧 Watch the full episode with…

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Earlier episodes 23 most recent

S2 · 6 Oct 2026 · 12 min
The Biggest Mistake People Make When Money Finally Arrives
When a life-changing amount of money finally lands in your account, most people expect pure joy. Often it feels flat, and that's exactly when the costly mistakes happen.In this Femme and Fortune deep dive, former Goldman Sachs wealth adviser Ayesha Ofori breaks down what to do (and what not to do) when a windfall arrives, whether it's a business sale, an inheritance, a divorce settlement or a £10,000 bonus.Inspired by Ayesha's podcast conversation with Edwina Dunn OBE, co-founder of Dunnhumby (the company behind the Tesco Clubcard) and founder of The Female Lead, who sold her business for…
S2 · E8 · 15 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
From GB Athlete to Multimillion Pound Founder. Now She's Helping Parents Raise Exceptional Kids
In this episode of Femme and Fortune, I sit down with Kike Agoro, former Team GB athlete turned founder of BYP Network, the platform connecting Black professionals with career opportunities and building community across the UK.Kike takes us right back to the beginning. Growing up in Hackney and Dagenham, she represented Great Britain in javelin, interned at banks like Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, and then walked away from it all to build BYP Network from her bedroom at 24, without ever putting a penny of her own money in.We talk about the cold emails that landed her a fully funded 100k…
S2 · E8 · 8 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Left a Well Paid Banking Job to Build a Fashion Brand Worn by the Duchess of Cambridge. Here's How.
From Goldman Sachs to a PhD in virology, Polly McMaster's path to founding The Fold was anything but a straight line, and the real story behind building the brand is one she's never fully told before. In this episode, Polly opens up about the parts of the entrepreneurial journey that don't make it onto LinkedIn: the panic attacks, the sleepless nights, and the wall of cash running out just as the business started to take off. She talks candidly about closing an angel round while quietly falling apart, signing a major funding deal 36 weeks pregnant, and being back in board meetings just five…
S2 · E8 · 1 Sep 2026 · 1 hr
Patricia Bright Reveals: How to Build a Following That Makes You Millions.
Patricia Bright built one of the biggest platforms in the UK, then walked away from the version of it that didn't feel like her. In this episode, we talk about the £2,000 a month she was making before she understood her own worth, the mansions she has watched get repossessed, and why she is still not satisfied even with a seven figure property portfolio, all of it mortgage free.We get into her journey from banking to becoming the UK's first Black female creator to hit a million followers on YouTube, why she walked away from viral content that made her millions but did not sit right with her,…
S2 · E6 · 25 Aug 2026 · 57 min
When You Take Investment in Your Business You're Not Just Getting Money. You're Losing Control.
From a market stall in Primrose Hill to six bakeries and £6 million in revenue, all without a penny of outside investment, Kim Innes, founder of Humble Crumble, joins the podcast to talk about turning a simple observation ("why is this ice cream shop empty in winter?") into one of London's most viral food brands.Kim opens up about the £60 she made on day one (and the money she lost that same day), the two years of grinding through weekend markets before things clicked, and the moment a Time Out post sent 50 people queueing for a pumpkin crumble she didn't have enough stock to sell. She also…
S2 · E5 · 18 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
I Negotiated a Full Year's Salary as a Sign-On Bonus - Twice: Tara's Guide to Negotiating
From a council estate in Peckham to Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and the Financial Times, Tara's career reads like a masterclass in building wealth as an employee. In this episode, we get into exactly how she did it.Tara opens up about growing up between two worlds, the shame she felt hiding where she lived, and the moment she realised her story wasn't a weakness but her biggest asset. We talk about what it actually takes to build a network from nothing, why finding a sponsor (not just a mentor) changed everything for her, and the negotiation tactics she used to secure a sign-on bonus worth a…
S2 · E4 · 11 Aug 2026 · 57 min
She's a Risk Expert Professionally, But Too Scared to Take Any Risk With Her Own Money.
Livia advised governments and multinationals on political and geopolitical risk for a living. She spent her career helping some of the world's most powerful organisations decide who to trust and where the danger was. Then she sold her own company, walked away with millions, and left it sitting in cash for three years because she couldn't bring herself to trust anyone with it. In this episode she sits down with Ayesha to talk about growing up in a family where knowledge mattered more than money, staying with a business everyone else was fleeing and coming out of it an owner, hiding a…
S2 · E3 · 6 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
She built a business and made life changing money. Now she’s doing it again
In this episode of Femme and Fortune, I sit down with Victoria Peppiatt, three-time founder and Co-CEO of Hey Savi, the AI-powered fashion platform she describes as Shazam for fashion.Vic's journey is remarkable. She ran creative agency The Pink Group with her husband for 11 years, sometimes putting the mortgage on a credit card to keep things going. Then she co-founded Phrasee, an AI marketing platform, and scaled it to a multi-million pound exit. That sale changed everything, not just for her but for the friends and family who backed her early. Some of her angel investors walked away with…
S2 · E2 · 28 Jul 2026 · 1 hr
She Married into a Billionaire Family. Then her Husbad Died. The Financial Truths No One Talks About. | Christine Dawood
In June 2023, the world watched as the search for the Titan submersible gripped every news channel and feed on the planet. Christine Dawood was on the support vessel. Her husband Shahzada and her 19 year old son Suleman were on board the sub.Three years on, Christine joins Ayesha for her most personal interview yet. This is not the story the headlines told. It is the story of who her family really were, what those 96 hours were actually like, and how a woman rebuilds a life, and a financial future, when the worst happens in front of the whole world.Christine shares how she moved from a small…
S2 · E1 · 22 Jul 2026 · 58 min
3 Things Every Parent Gets Wrong About Kids And Money | GoHenry Founder: Louise Hill
What if everything you were taught about money came too late? Louise Hill was 47, a single mum with two kids, a mortgage and virtually no savings when she quit her job to build GoHenry, the app that has taught millions of children how to earn, save and spend. In this episode she tells me how it really happened: the years of dead ends, the record breaking crowdfund that raised £4 million in a single weekend, and the truth about what founders actually take home when their company sells for a reported £180 million.We talk about why schools are still failing our kids when it comes to money, the…
8 Jul 2026 · 13 min
The Real Secret to Wealth Isn't a Big Idea: 4 Lessons From a £100M Ice Cream Founder
Everyone tells you that you need a completely original idea to build wealth. Here's why that's nonsense.In this Femme and Fortune deep dive, Ayesha breaks down one of the biggest myths in business: that you need a never been done before idea to build real wealth. Drawing on a conversation with Vivian Wong, cofounder of Little Moon's Mochi Ice Cream, Ayesha unpacks the concept of an edge, and why it matters far more than originality ever will.Little Moon's did not invent mochi ice cream. Viv and her brother took something that already existed and made it better, bootstrapping the business by…
30 Jun 2026 · 16 min
How £1,000 Turned Into £600,000: Angel Investing Explained
Because for every Revolut, there are thousands of startups that go to zero and take every penny with them. In this Femme and Fortune deep dive, Ayesha Ofori breaks down how angel investing actually works, why you don't need to be wealthy to start (you can invest from as little as £10), and how two UK government schemes, SEIS and EIS, can give you back up to 50% of what you invest through tax relief.This deep dive is based on Ayesha's full podcast conversation with venture capitalist Yvonne Bajela, linked below.LINKSWatch the full episode with Yvonne Bajela:…
23 Jun 2026 · 13 min
How a £10,000 Pay Rise Becomes £1.72 Million
A high salary is not the same as wealth. For years Ayesha Ofori managed money for some of the wealthiest people around, and the thing that surprised her most was that almost none of them had a remarkable salary. What they had was ownership.In this Femme and Fortune Deep Dive, Ayesha breaks down the four shifts that separate people who earn well from people who actually build wealth, drawn from her podcast conversation with Lamide Elizabeth. You'll learn why your net worth matters more than your salary, how to turn what you earn into what you own, why "multiple income streams" can be one…
S1 · E10 · 16 Jun 2026 · 57 min
From Goldman to Founder: The £500M Banker Who Walked Away to Build Wealth for Women
I managed half a billion pounds for some of the wealthiest people in the country. Not one of them built that wealth from their salary. To close out Season 1 of Femme & Fortune, Ayesha Ofori turns the tables. After a whole season asking other women how they built their wealth, this time she's in the guest seat, answering the questions she gets asked most about her own journey. From a state primary to a private school in Hampstead, where she first saw what real wealth looked like (a school friend with a lift in her living room), to a physics degree at Imperial, an MBA at London Business…
S1 · E9 · 12 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
From Supermarket Cashier to Entrepreneur, making £60 Billion for Tesco and £92 Million for herself
She Turned a Loyalty Card Into £92 Million | Edwina Dunn OBE Every time you scan a supermarket Clubcard at the till, you are using something Edwina Dunn created. In this episode, Ayesha sits down with the woman who changed the way the entire retail world understands its customers. Edwina co-founded Dunnhumby with her husband Clive Humby, built the data engine behind the Tesco Clubcard, and went on to sell the business for around £92 million. Today she is the founder of The Female Lead and one of the most influential voices on women, money & ambition in the UK. The road to success was not a…
S1 · E8 · 2 Jun 2026 · 57 min
From Medicine to Millions: The NHS Doctor Who Built Her Own Empire
From medicine to millions - Dr Ifeoma Ejikeme on building wealth through expertise Dr Ifeoma Ejikeme didn't follow the traditional path. She trained as a doctor, studied business management at Imperial College London, completed a fellowship at Columbia University, and then walked away from surgery to build something that didn't exist yet. Today she is the founder and medical director of Adonia Medical Clinic, a premium aesthetics and skin health clinic that has won Best Clinic London six times in six years. She holds two medical patents, has performed over 30,000 procedures, and has built…
S1 · E7 · 26 May 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
Why Your Salary Will Never Build Wealth (And What Actually Will) | Charlotte Baroukh
Charlotte Baroukh is a chartered accountant and tax expert at Pie, the UK's first free tax app. She has built one of the most engaged finance communities on Instagram, breaking down the tax rules that most people were never taught.In this episode, Charlotte and Ayesha get into why your salary will never be enough to build real wealth, the tax mistakes that are costing self-employed women thousands, and why equity ownership changes everything.They also get honest about the realities of corporate life, the politics nobody warns you about, what it actually means to go part time after having…
19 May 2026 · 55 min
She Earned More, Paid For Everything & Lost Half In The Divorce - Here's What She'd Do Differently
What happens when you give up everything for love and it still isn't enough? In this episode of Femme & Fortune, Ayesha sits down with Nathalie Lethbridge, a powerhouse who built an extraordinary career across three continents, rose to senior management at Disney, advised corporations on multi-million pound deals and still found herself starting over financially in her 50s. Nathalie opens up about the moments that changed everything: being told she wasn't worthy of an LSE education because she was a girl, leaving behind a VP career for love, surviving a brain tumour with two children under…
S1 · E5 · 12 May 2026 · 1 hr 10 min
Investor Reveals the Secrets to Picking Startup Winners | Yvonne Bajela
Most people read picture books at age 8. Yvonne Bajela was reading the Financial Times.Growing up on a council estate in Mitcham, South London, Yvonne's father made sure of that. That early conditioning set her on a path to Goldman Sachs, strategy consulting, her own startup, and eventually a decade-long career in venture capital at some of Europe's most respected funds, including Local Globe.Now she's backing herself. She's raising her own VC fund and betting on the founders she believes will reshape entire industries.In this episode we get into:What VCs are actually looking for in founders…
S1 · E4 · 5 May 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
She Started Nails Inc at 23 With £250K. Years Later She Sold It for £30M | Thea Green
What does it actually take to build a 30 million business and then sell it? In this episode of Femme & Fortune, Ayesha Ofori sits down with Thea Green MBE, founder of Nails Inc, to talk about the journey from starting a company at 23 with 250K to selling it to private equity in 2024. Thea was working as a fashion editor, earning 11K a year in London, when she spotted a gap no one else was seeing. What followed was not a fast rise. It was decades of building, scaling, nearly breaking, and figuring out how to make money in an industry that looked glamorous but ran on razor-thin margins. They…
28 Apr 2026 · 59 min
How Vivien Wong Built Little Moons Into a Global Brand
In this episode of Femme & Fortune, Ayesha Ofori sits down with Vivien Wong, co founder of Little Moons, the mochi ice cream brand that went from a homemade idea to a global business.Vivien shares how she started with a simple ice cream machine at home while still working in finance, and how she turned that into one of the UK’s most recognisable food brands.This is not a “perfect plan” story. It is about resourcefulness, problem solving, and building slowly over time.We cover:• Growing up in a family business and how it shaped her mindset• Why she didn’t need a completely original idea to…
S1 · E2 · 21 Apr 2026 · 57 min
From Scholarship Student to Wealth Builder: How Lamide Did It
In this episode of Femme & Fortune, Ayesha Ofori sits down with Lamide Elizabeth, former investment banker turned founder, investor and creator of Building Wealth Without Borders.Lamide didn’t follow a traditional path.She grew up in Hackney, got herself into private school on a scholarship, went on to LSE, and started her career in investment banking. But early on, she realised something most people miss.A high salary doesn’t mean you’re building wealth.In this conversation, she breaks down the decisions that changed everything. From questioning the corporate path, to building assets,…
14 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
How Maxine Laceby Built a £42M Beauty Empire in Her 50s
Maxine Laceby didn’t grow up around business.She grew up on a council estate, left school at 16, and built her career in a completely different world before ever thinking about starting something of her own.She didn’t start Absolute Collagen until her 50s.No background in beauty.No experience building a company.Today, it’s a £42M brand.In this episode of Femme & Fortune, she sits down with Ayesha Ofori, a former investment banker, to talk about how it actually happened.Not just the outcome.But everything that led up to it.Her upbringing.The early parts of her career.What pushed her to start…

About Femme & Fortune

Femme & Fortune is a English business podcast from Ayesha Ofori. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Ayesha Ofori
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 59 min
Latest episode: 6 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1891346231
Rights: Ayesha Ofori

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