Sarah Barratt Ball

Sarah is Founder and CEO of Mimesis Innovation. She is a senior finance and innovation ecosystem leader with over 30 years’ experience spanning banking, hedge funds, entrepreneurship, and venture acceleration. 

After serving as a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley on Wall Street, she became a Partner and Executive Committee member of a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund, serving through the 2008 financial crisis. This experience led Sarah to co-found and scale two advisory firms working with startup hedge fund founders in New York and Oxford. 

In 2020, she moved into innovation leadership as Director and Global Co-Site Lead of the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Oxford. There she built and led one of Europe’s leading deep-tech venture acceleration programmes over its five year lifespan, working closely with founders tackling complex growth challenges across AI, Climate, Fintech, Health and Space. Today Sarah focuses on guiding the next generation of technology entrepreneurs and innovation- led organisations as they navigate rapid business growth, strategic decision-making and leadership complexity.