ETA Awards 2025

Bramley has spent more than fifteen years immersed in the search fund community, working alongside, advising, and investing in searchers around the world. He is a founding partner of Victoriam Equity, a global fund committed to putting searchers first. Prior to founding Victoriam, Bramley served as Managing Director of Avanti Ventures—an established investment firm founded in 1988 and a backer of Europe’s first search fund. Over the years, he has invested in search funds across five continents.

Based in Barcelona, Bramley is the former Director of the International Search Fund Center, where he led major initiatives including the International Search Fund Conference—the largest event of its kind outside the U.S.—and the European Investors Summit. He also founded the European CEO Summit and the Women in Search Forum. His contributions to the community include contributions to Jan Simon’s book Search Funds & Entrepreneurial Acquisitions, an appearance on the Found and Funded podcast, and support in completing the 2024 IESE Selected Observations Study. Bramley continues to mentor aspiring searchers as they begin their journey toward acquiring and leading companies.

Alex is the MD of Workpays, an employability and skills training provider based in the Midlands with ten offices and over 100 staff. Alex acquired the company in 2021 through his search fund, Coniston Peak, which he set up in 2020, bringing together global investors to build a leading training provider. Since acquisition, the company has doubled its revenue and grown its reach and Alex now regularly writes for FE News, the industry’s leading news outlet. Before founding Coniston Peak, Alex worked in investment banking in New York. He started his career as a parliamentary aide for a senior Labour MP and subsequently worked at Citi in equity research and as Director of Strategy of New York Public Radio.

Lisa’s career began as a Senior Crown Prosecutor in Greater Manchester. Following an enjoyable six years, she left to set up her own venture in the field of marketing and business development working with several household names including Fidelity, Barclays and Addleshaw Goddard.

Lisa qualified as a business coach and took that experience back into Pannone LLP as Head of Entrepreneurial Services. In this role, Lisa worked directly with SMEs, OMBs and Entrepreneurs to help deliver exemplary client service and built a model to provide a new holistic service to NW clients.

Lisa joined DWF LLP to lead the Client Programmes, a role which took her all over the world, leading to the firm’s IPO in 2019. Leading a team of ten client relationships managers took Lisa away from the coal face and in 2020 she accepted a role as Client Relationship Director at Taylor Vinters (now merged with Mishcon de Reya). In this role she built a model to illustrate how the firm could help Entrepreneurs with their whole client journey from inception to exit. At JMW, Lisa is focussed on achieving best-in-class client satisfaction as well as growing and expanding the client’s loyal customer base.