Graduate awarded Judge's Choice accolade at the prestigious Santander Universities Emerging Entrepreneurs Awards

Recent Business and Law graduate, Jenny Mcfadden, was a final year student when her business ‘Pretty Mama’ was chosen to represent Northumbria in the national Santander Universities Awards 2020.

Pretty Mama, a maternity clothing company, creates underwear and clothing garments for breastfeeding mothers. The company was started by Jenny and her sister Alex in 2018, after Alex struggled to find feminine maternity underwear when she was pregnant with her daughter. The two sisters wanted to design and produce a collection of underwear that aimed to boost women's confidence in the postpartum bodies. With their combined degrees and experience, Jenny and Alex, who holds a fashion degree, put their skills together and founded Pretty Mama 'with the goal to empower mothers on their nursing journey by feeling beautiful, confident and comfortable’.

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards, a prestigious competition for student businesses and entrepreneurs from all of the 86 universities partnered with Santander Universities UK. To celebrate their anniversary year they decided to run the Santander Universities Emerging Entrepreneurs Programme.

The programme ran from May to October and featured a Virtual Launch Event, exclusive Online Content, an Accelerator Programme and culminated in a live pitching event.

Northumbria's Student & Graduate Enterprise Team chose Pretty Mama to represent the University in the programme and to be in with a chance of being crowned the 2020 winner and to receive a share of the £90,000 cash prize.

Speaking of the programme, Jenny thought the competition was an amazing opportunity and loved everything about it stating, ‘ I absolutely loved taking part in the Santander competition, it was an amazing opportunity and experience to represent Northumbria in a national competition and become Judges Choice winner!

There was a real sense of community within the competition as we formed group chats, this was amazing during the live zoom pitches as we were all supporting each other behind the scenes. I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity as it has been one of the best business experiences so far!’

During the programme, the businesses were also challenged to set up a Crowdfunding Campaign and Jenny and Alex were successful in their campaign, smashing their total before the deadline.

Graham Baty, Head of Student & Graduate Enterprise at Northumbria said ‘Jenny and Alex have shown real entrepreneurial flair through identifying and solving a problem for new mums. The Santander Universities award was just recognition for the progress they’ve made to date; the University is looking forward to further supporting Pretty Mama as the business continues to grow.’

Northumbria University has a successful track record in the Santander Universities Awards, with graduate business owner Alexander Hay making it to the competition's final in last year's competition with his design business, Alexander Hay Designs.

Northumbria's Student & Graduate Enterprise team specialise in helping students and graduates up to five years post-graduation start their own business or work freelance by providing mentoring support, workshops and co-working space at Innovation Northumbria: Incubator where graduates can use to develop and grow their business. The University has been in the top three universities in the UK for graduate start-ups based on estimated turnover for the past five years. (HEBCIS 2018/19), click here to find out more.