Empresses Chi-chi & Phoebe! 👑

All hail Empresses Chi-chi & Phoebe! 🙌🖤

For this week’s episode of The Empress Diaries podcast we had a chat with Chi-chi and Phoebe and wow what a total honour it was! This is powerhouse superwoman dynamic mother-daughter duo epitomised! You can enjoy this fascinating conversation by clicking HERE.

Here’s a glimpse at what makes these women just so incredible…. 🙌🙌🙌

Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE is a renowned double-bassist and founder of the incredible Chineke! Foundation, which supports, inspires and encourages Black and Minority Ethnic classical musicians working in the UK and Europe. She was also a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and held the position of Principal double bass there for 30 years as well as being a Professor of Double Bass Historical Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, where she was made a Fellow in 1998. 

Chi-chi is a prolific broadcaster presenting BBC Radio 3 Requests for four years and regularly guesting for the TV Proms and other high-profile tv and radio shows including BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in February 2018.

In 2012 she created the Royal Philharmonic Society's Salomon Prize, which celebrates the ‘unsung heroes’ working in the ranks of British orchestras. Chi-chi was awarded the OBE for Services to Music in 2017 and the MBE in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday honours. She was named in the Top 10 of the BBC Woman’s Hour, Women in Music Power List 2018 and was voted to the ‘Powerlist of Britain’s 100 Most Influential Black People 2019'.

Learn more about the Chi-chi’s incredible Chineke! foundation here: https://www.chineke.org

Phoebe Hugh is a young entrepreneur and CEO founder of tech company Brolly. Phoebe got her first job at age 10, doing the paper round, before spending her teenage years juggling a number of creative jobs - an Indian Head masseuse, a roller-skating waitress; and running Texas Hold'em Poker games in London. Alongside this she was competitive in both sports and music. Phoebe studied Piano, Cello and the Percussion ensemble; whilst also competing at county level in Athletics. 

After reading Psychology at the University of Manchester, Phoebe joined the graduate programme at insurance giant Aviva. She quickly worked her way up the ranks, whilst gaining qualifications with the Chartered Insurance Institute, before becoming frustrated at how broken and archaic insurance is; and she quit her job in order to build a better insurance company - Brolly - learning to code along the way. Brolly is the startup building the world’s simplest insurance experience, enabling people to insure everything they care about, directly from their smartphones, in a simple monthly subscription. Brolly was named “Insurance Company of the Year” by CityA.M. - the first startup to win in this category.

Phoebe has been listed in Forbes ‘30 Under 30’, the ‘Women in Fintech Powerlist’ and Business Insider’s ‘100 Coolest People in Tech’, among others.

Check out Phoebe’s company Brolly here: https://heybrolly.com