Rod Leefe

Rod Leefe is a British entrepreneur, investor, board chair and strategist. Born in June 1961, he describes himself as a serial entrepreneur with experience sitting on private, listed, BCorp and not-for-profit boards across the recruitment, corporate finance and environmental services sectors. He holds a Fellowship of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).

Since 2014 he has served as Chair of Shaw & Co, a Bristol-based corporate finance and advisory firm (trading as Shaw Corporate Finance, formerly Shaw LLP). In addition to chairing the board, he holds the role of Head of People, where he shapes the firm's people and talent strategy and acts as a sounding board to fellow directors and the CEO. Alongside his firm work, he coaches founders of start-ups and scale-ups, as well as boards and CEOs of established businesses.

Public records list him as a company director; UK Companies House records a directorship at Development Through Challenge (a not-for-profit associated with the Mile End Climbing Wall in London), appointed April 2020. Outside of business, he is known for endurance and outdoor pursuits — high-altitude hiking in the Pyrenees, backcountry skiing and competitive indoor rowing — and for renovating a redundant winery in southern France.

• Invests personally (as an angel) in disruptive HR Tech / "Work Tech" businesses — companies rethinking recruitment, hiring, credentialing and careers.
• Backs early-stage founders, participating in seed and early growth rounds (e.g., taking part in SonicJobs' 2021 Series A).
• Brings operational and board-level value beyond capital: he coaches founders and CEOs and frequently takes chair/NED/advisor roles, so he tends to favour situations where he can add hands-on strategic and people/talent guidance.
• Sector conviction sits squarely in recruitment and the future of work, reflecting his own decades of experience in the recruitment and corporate-finance sectors.