Suggest Your Heroes
Have you escaped? Know someone who has?The Hero Hall of Fame
Hero
Walking Table Mountain to Cape Point brings aha! moment
Simon Middleton voluntarily resigned his global HR leadership role to set up a business committed to identifying 80 entreprenurs annually and seeding the British economy with a new generation of wealth builders.
Hero
Ex management consultant starts a P-2-P passion marketplace
In June 2011, George escaped Bain & Company to start Kicktable, a community marketplace offering authentic urban experiences hosted by passionate people. Prior to Bain, he also worked at JP Morgan and did a documentary about social entrepreneurship in South America
Hero
A quest to restore trust and improve financial services
Nick couldn't believe that wealth management was so expensive or so random. Fees eat a giant part of returns, portfolios receive different levels of service, relationships are often condescending and unless you are wealthy you can't join the club! Nick escaped with a mission to transform the industry; to set up a smart, user-friendly on-line investment company available to everyone: Nutmeg.
Hero
From promoting famous design icons to real life storytelling
Louise escaped her position as Product and Market Relations Manager in a successful design firm to set up an independent creative consulting business. The dream... to be able to lead projects and collaborations with more creative freedom and focus on the real stories behind and not only pursue the commercial aspects of a product or concept.
Hero
Feel the fear and it do anyway
Emma Mapp escaped being a city lawyer to set up the London Photo Festival, Abitoffthemapp Photography and to head up the PR and Marketing department for London Bridge City. She's moved away from the restricted mindset that you have to follow one career path which leads to one job for life when you can instead 'mix and match' and create your own opportunities.
Hero
New media city girl escapes to Cornwall and online yoga
Gemma escaped the fast paced, work hard, play hard New Media world in London to teach yoga and set up a forward thinking online yoga business in the stunning setting of the North Cornish coast.
Hero
From Canary Wharf to the African bush
Francesca quit her Account Management job in advertising in August 2010, to be a full time artist, specialising in painting East African wildlife. She set off to Tanzania and Kenya in 2010, to camp out in the wild, and sketch everything around her, and hasn't looked back.
Hero
From "Entern" to Entrepreneur - Ry Morgan.
In Ry Morgan's case the term "escape" should be loosely applied. Instead of delving into the rat-race and clambering out, he instead set his sights well clear of "the city" from day 1. A 2010 alumni from St Andrews, he'd perpetually engaged with enterprise throughout his degree - including a three-month "enternship" - so the natural progression post-uni was to launch his own start-up.
Hero
Retreating to move forward in a new direction
Jackie Nelson escaped a senior HR role in an investment bank to use her skills and experiences to help people in the UK and now also in Central Asia to realise their potential.
Hero
From biotech to green burials and funeral consumer advocacy
Shannon Shoup escaped the biotechnology industry to set up a funeral consumer advocacy non-profit and to oversee compliance of green burials.
Hero
Starting A New Overland Adventure Company In West Africa
After working for Dragoman Overland for five years, I realised that my passion for travel lay in West Africa.
I noticed that West Africa is a part of the world that most tour operators ignored, and if they do offer trips there they are very limited in terms of the countries and places visited.
I wanted to redress that balance and open up the region to further exploration.
Hero
Ex M&A Banker starts a Fashion E-tail Business
Vivek escaped Oil & Gas Investment Banking to start an online fashion business focussed on high-end designer clothing and accessories from Indian Fashion Designers.
The inspiration is Net-a-Porter, that offers some of the best designer products, and the concept of Strand of Silk is to offer the best of leading Indian Fashion Designers.
Hero
Two Ex-Morgan Stanley traders start an online dating agency
Maxime Leufroy-Murat and Alexandre Errera escaped the trading floor to set up an innovative online dating agency to hep busy professionals outsource their online dating life.
Hero
3 female entrepreneurs leave the Big Smoke for Scotland
Lucie Hardie, Holly Jones and Celia Graham all escaped the city in 2010. They were fed up with the hustle and bustle of London and having no idea what they wanted to do decided to pool their knowledge and know how and start a company north of the border in Edinburgh.
Hero
Escapee starts Designer Jewellery Boutique
In October 2010 I resigned from my city job, to go to another city job… and in the joys of the city life, I was given 2 months gardening leave - a time most people spend relaxing. On my first morning off, nursing a hangover, I turned my bedroom upside down and unearthed my book of business ideas ... I don’t think I have left my desk since and I couldn't be happier.
Hero
Teacher dances out of the classroom & into the record books
After a year teaching in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border, 33 year-old teacher Ben Hammond sought a way to bring Burma alive for UK school children. His answer, alarmingly, was dance, and his dad-at-a-wedding dancing adventures have seen him dance on mountaintops, through Glastonbury Festival and the entire London Marathon, and dance the world's longest ever dance: 5 days, 15 hours.
Hero
Think you're not creative? Think again.
Two years ago, Nicola Taylor was a stockbroker in the City of London. Financially and professionally successful but bored and exhausted, she opted to leave it all behind to become a fine art photographer. Using herself as a model and taking inspiration from the folklore and stories of her native North Yorkshire, she now sells her work online, at art fairs and through galleries
Hero
Venturing into online retail
Marcus left management consulting in London to set up online retail site www.sorsd.com while studying product design in Seoul, South Korea.
Hero
Don't sell your soul, build a tribe and change lives!
Simon Smith was 28 years old and one of the highest paid ad salesmen in London. A motorcycle adventure in India saved his soul, which he says "was nearly completely sold to the devil" and in 2002 he gave up his large salary, sold his Porsche and embarked on a 10 year journey that has changed thousands of lives and raised nearly £4,000,000 for charities he believes in.
Hero
From start-up to Europe’s leading online chemist
In December 2007 Mitesh Soma set up Chemist Direct, an online pharmacy offering more than 30,000 products with up to 90% savings on the high street, with his wife Krishna, a qualified chemist. Today, it is Europe's largest online chemist, with more than 100,000 hits a week.