As part of International Women’s Day, we thought it would be good to tell you more about one of our Founders, Leah Bowen.

Leah spent most of her corporate career in financial services and technology, working on a number of large-scale projects.  In the latter part of her city career, her role as Investment Change Manager involved supporting the senior project team by managing the financials, managing risks and issues, and ensuring smooth communication with globally diverse teams.   

Whilst working she built up a property portfolio alongside her husband, Mark.   Both Mark and Leah invested in themselves by undertaking professional property training, and realised they needed to engage a mentor to accelerate their knowledge and growth to be truly successful.  This mentor helped speed up the growth of their portfolio, connecting them to valuable contacts and helping them make the right choices, quickly and decisively.

Their portfolio includes BTLs, HMOs, supported living, commercial rent to rent, flips and a grade II commercial to residential conversion. 

This portfolio allowed Leah to fulfil a dream and quit the city job, which she did in March 2020 not knowing the world was about to change!

Then as the pandemic hit and the ability to acquire more properties was looking more unlikely.  The other founders of Supported Living Gateway, Mark, Russ & Rich, came up with the idea of connecting care businesses and property owners at scale.  The idea was great, but they needed help operating the business, so Leah was called on to use her experience, knowledge and skills to get the underlying processes set up.

Although Leah was the last one to join the team of founders, she has proven to be integral to our ongoing success.  The founding team have complimentary skills and Leah’s ability to nurture people and to juggle multiple priorities has been key in enabling the company grow to the position it is in today.

As well as being part of the team running The Gateway, Leah also manages all day-to-day aspects of her and Mark’s property portfolio, manages her SSAS pension scheme investments, and still finds time to volunteer as a gardener at two local public gardens.

Through her focus on quality, strong work ethic and desire to always perform at the best of her abilities Leah has managed to excel in two entirely different work environments that are generally male dominated: The City and Property Investment.