Sara Roberts

4× Founder Helping HealthTech Scale Without Breaking Founders | Strategic Advisor to Series A+ Ventures | £10M+ ARR Track Record | Speaker | Top 10 Global Thought Leader

The day my dad died from a preventable illness, my work changed direction.

That moment became the anchor for everything that followed, my companies, my values, and my conviction that healthcare must shift from reactive crisis management to proactive, ethical, and fundamentally human systems.

Over 15+ years, I've built and scaled four ventures across three continents, including taking a consumer health brand from £0 to £10M ARR. I've built international supply chains, secured FTSE100 and government contracts, and driven commercial expansion under real constraints.

I've also lost companies - to fraud, and the hidden costs of prioritising velocity over viability.

Those failures clarified something critical: the companies that scale sustainably aren't led by the hardest-working founders. They're led by the most strategically disciplined ones.

WHAT I DO NOW
I lead Well Purposed, a strategic advisory studio helping post–Series A HealthTech, longevity and impact founders build sustainable, profitable scale through:
→ Scale systems that unlock 2–3× growth without fragmenting focus
→ Market readiness for UK/EU/African expansion
→ Founder operating systems that stabilise decision-making
→ Commercial partnerships that accelerate adoption and revenue
→ Team and narrative alignment that sustains execution

The companies we work with don't just grow faster. They grow more sustainably, aligning profit, purpose, and the health of the people building them.

RECOGNITION & ROLES
→ Top 10 Global HealthTech Thought Leader (Thinkers360)
→ Top 20 UK HealthTech Expert (Favikon)
→ Henry Royce BioMaterials Investment Committee
→ WELL Nourishment Global Advisory
→ Queen's Award for Sustainable Development
→ B Corp-certified (previous venture)

WHAT I BELIEVE
→ Governance is the new growth. Compliance isn't your bottleneck. It's your moat.
→ Founders are infrastructure. The pace of the company matches the pulse of its founder.
→ Ethics is a competitive advantage. Trust compounds faster than capital.

LOOKING AHEAD
I write and speak on HealthTech scale, ethical growth, founder resilience, and preventative health systems. I partner with organisations shaping the future of global health and longevity.

I'm selectively exploring executive roles (COO, CSO, MD, or CEO succession) in high-growth HealthTech companies where operational experience, strategic clarity, and a prevention-first mindset can drive both commercial success and meaningful impact.

If your mission is to build a healthier future, we likely have work to do together.

📩 sara@wellpurposed.com
🔗 www.wellpurposed.com

Founder and CEO

Healthy Nibbles makes healthy, sustainable food accessible and transparently earth positive; delivering great food, for a better future at work, home and on-the-go.

The top 3 problems we solve:

Consumer Health: 
People are time-poor, under pressure and unhealthy. Whilst the desire for sustainable healthy food is there and growing, accessing it at the right time, location and price is problematic. Healthy Nibbles are changing the narrative.

Hybrid Working: 
76% of the population choose hybrid working, and businesses struggle to provide food/wellbeing solutions to suit the ebbs and flow of building occupancy along with the necesary support and engagement with home workers. Our curated solutions solve this.

Dynamic Insights: 
Retail reports are expensive, agency reports are arm’s length. Healthy Nibbles deliver real-time, dynamic insights to support product innovation, F&B investment, and media/marketing engagement. 

Reaching over 244m consumers, loved by Three Mobile, Vitality, BBC, Spotify, EY, The Office Group and TfL, Healthy Nibbles deliver:

Wellness Hubs
The future of office catering and wellbeing. Combining the best in self-service convenience, design-led build, healthy food brands across chilled, frozen, and snacks, barista coffee, with an engaging employee wellbeing hub providing round the clock access to wellness and health.

Corporate Gifting 
Employee rewards and corporate gifts working with 60% minority founded brands, delivering gift experiences that inspire and delight.

Healthy Vending Machines
Open up a world of choice with over 1500 SKUs from exciting and up-and-coming healthy brands with full allergy and nutritional breakdown on-screen before purchase.

Insight-as-a-Service
Discover powerful insights behind purchase data to build a case for investment, innovation and media placement.

I’m not a clinician - and that’s exactly why founders hire me.

I work 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 clinicians. 
I don’t replace them. 
And I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.

My role is commercial, strategic, and operational. Building the system around validated health and wellbeing innovation so it can scale without losing integrity.

Most of the founders I work with already have: 
– a strong clinical or scientific foundation 
– early validation or traction 
– investor or board pressure increasing

What they don’t yet have is a commercial and operating system that can carry that innovation forward.

That’s where I come in.

⛔ I don’t run clinical trials. 
⛔ I don’t design regulatory pathways. 
⛔ I don’t claim reimbursement expertise.

✅ What I 𝘥𝘰 bring is over 15 years of experience building and scaling companies across nutrition, wellbeing, sustainability, and health, including taking businesses from zero to £10mARR, expanding internationally, and operating under real commercial pressure.

I sit in what I call the 'messy middle': 
– translating clinical reality into board-level decisions 
– protecting long-term trust when growth expectations rise
– helping founders move from intuition-led building to system-led execution

Too often, when growth starts to take shape, founders get overloaded. The impact is often slower decision-making and blurring ownership boundaries. Then the business starts drifting.

My work is to prevent that drift.

If you’re building in preventative health, metabolic health, wearables, B2B2C wellbeing, or corporate wellness, and you’re post-MVP or post-raise, alignment matters more than hype.

I’m not here to sell certainty. I’m here to build something that lasts.

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

Your company's pace will always match your pulse. Choose wisely.

I spent years believing that rest was something I'd earn after the next milestone. 

After the funding round.
After the product launch.
After we hit a target.

The problem? The milestones kept moving. And so the rest never came.

What I eventually learned, the hard way, is that recovery isn't a reward for productivity. 

It's a prerequisite for it.

Unstable founder physiology isn't a personal issue. It's a systemic risk.

The strongest founders I work with don't push through exhaustion. They design around their capacity. They protect energy like they protect margin. 

Because the data is clear: depleted founders make worse decisions. 

They miss ethical signals. 
They shortcut governance. 
They burn teams.

Your health isn't separate from your company's health. It's the foundation of it.

This weekend, protect one thing: sleep timing, movement, or genuine rest.

Not because you've earned it. Because your business depends on it

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

If we were sitting down for a coffee and you asked me where I’d start before talking about growth, I’d probably say this:

Most HealthTech companies don’t stall because the product is bad.
They stall because the evidence can’t keep up with the ambition.

Before partnerships, before scaling plans, before the shiny stuff, I always come back to one simple question:

Does this solve a real health or system problem, and can you prove it?

Traction doesn’t really mean downloads or pilots. It means trust.

Trust from clinicians.
Trust from employers or systems.
Trust from partners who know that once something is adopted, it has to work, not just once, but over time.

This is what I mean by product–market integrity.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s about being honest, evidence-led, and willing to look at the data even when it’s uncomfortable.

The founders I see scale well tend to:
– fall in love with the data as much as the idea
– build feedback loops early
– treat quality and compliance as part of growth, not admin
– understand that credibility compounds faster than capital

In my role at Well Purposed, I sit alongside clinical and technical experts translating evidence into commercial clarity.

The old “move fast and break things” mindset doesn’t hold up.
What the market rewards now is proof, not promises.

If you’re building in preventative health, wellbeing, metabolic health, wearables, or B2B2C health, and you’re post-MVP or post-raise, this lever matters more than most people realise.

Because if integrity cracks early, everything downstream gets harder.

Next week, I’ll share Lever 2 - why so many HealthTech companies think they’re market-ready… and aren’t.

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

SARA_ROBERTS_4x Founder_ Well Purposed_ Why traction in he

I’ve been working on something quietly over the past few months.

Not another opinion piece.
Not a hustle framework.
Not “wellness” repackaged for founders.

It’s a playbook.

The WELL Founder Playbook. Built for founders scaling under pressure, scrutiny, uncertainty and responsibility.

After 15+ years building and scaling companies across health, wellbeing, and regulated markets, I’ve seen a familiar pattern. Founders are faltering because their 'founder system' isn’t designed to carry the weight of scale.

Burnout.
Ethical drift.
Loss of clarity.
Quiet isolation.

All predictable. And importantly, all preventable.

This playbook focuses on what we rarely talk about openly:

• Physiological leadership
• Cognitive clarity
• Ethical scale
• Commercial discipline
• Identity and boundaries
• Longevity thinking

The purposed is not to slow founders down, by giving them something else to do, but to empower them to last - to complete the marathon!

It’ll be launching later this week.

If you’re building and feeling the weight of it - this one’s for you.

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

Most playbooks talk about how to scale the company. Very few talk about what that scale does to the 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿.

The long days. 
The quiet pressure. 
The responsibility that doesn’t switch off. 
The sense that you’re carrying more than anyone really sees.

After years building and scaling in across 3 continents, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat itself. Strong traction on the outside, quiet erosion of the founder on the inside.

Burnout doesn’t arrive suddenly. 
Loss of clarity doesn’t announce itself. 
Ethical pressure creeps in slowly.

Not because founders aren’t resilient, but because no one designs for the 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮.

That’s why I wrote 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗟 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸.

It’s not about slowing down or opting out of ambition. 

It’s about building the personal infrastructure required to lead under pressure, protect what matters to you, and stay well enough to last.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗟 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱. Link in the comments.

Happy Friday.

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

I don’t often pause to reflect publicly, but this one felt worth sharing.

I was invited to take part in a Thinkers360 Thought Leader Interview, exploring my work at the intersection of HealthTech, leadership, and design thinking, and the ideas that have shaped how I build and advise today.

Over the past 15+ years, I’ve had the privilege (and pressure) of building and scaling ventures across the UK, Europe, and Africa, growing companies to £10M+ ARR, navigating regulated markets, and learning firsthand that innovation only matters if it translates into real-world adoption.

Much of my work has been shaped by lived experience, including losing my father to a preventable illness. That moment fundamentally changed how I think about healthcare, leadership, and responsibility.

In the interview, we talk about:

• Why HealthTech doesn’t fail because of ideas but because of execution and systems
• What it really takes to scale in complex environments
• How founders can lead under pressure
• Why preventative health, longevity, and ethical design are becoming non-negotiable

I’m grateful to Thinkers360 for the opportunity and for recognising my work as part of their Top 50 Global Thought Leaders in HealthTech 2025.

More than anything, I hope the conversation is useful for founders, operators, and leaders trying to turn innovation into impact, without losing themselves in the process.

If you’re building in HealthTech, I’d love to hear:
what’s the hardest part of translating great ideas into reality right now?

https://lnkd.in/ept-FE8x

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⭐I’m Sara - a HealthTech strategic advisor, fractional operator, and 4x founder who’s scaled ventures to £10M+ ARR across the UK, Europe and Africa. I help founders navigate complexity, rebuild strategic clarity, and scale sustainably. Founder of Well Purposed.

Open article: Thought Leader and Influencer Interview with Sara Roberts, HealthTech Entrepreneur and Founder, Well Purposed by thinkers360.com

Thought Leader and Influencer Interview with Sara Roberts, HealthTech Entrepreneur and Founder, Well Purposed

Keynote Speaker | Human Performance Scientist | Consultant & Advisor | Unlock Extraordinary Performance Without Compromising Wellbeing

I equip leaders and teams to perform under pressure, without burning out.

My journey started with a question: what separates people who perform at their best under pressure from those who struggle and slip? I've chased the answer for two-decades, first as a full-time racing cyclist (not the most talented, but relentlessly curious), then through a PhD studying how elite performers think and execute when the stakes are high.

That path took me to Formula 1. As former Chief Innovation Officer for the performance coaching company behind 19 F1 World Championships, I helped develop methods that support clarity and execution when time is tight and consequences are high.

I continue to work with F1 teams and elite performers today, so my insights come from the cutting edge, not the archive. I bring those insights into everyday business pressure: always-on work, change, ambiguity, conflict, and relentless pace, working with organisations like PwC, HSBC, and Mercedes-Benz through my consultancy, the Knowledge Work Lab.

And my understanding of pressure isn't just professional. When I faced and fought back from cancer, I learned firsthand what high-stakes moments do to the mind and body.

After two decades studying elite and everyday performance, one truth keeps proving itself: people rarely struggle under pressure because they lack talent. They struggle because nobody trained them for that moment. That’s the work I do now, because:

Pressure is inevitable. Performance is trainable.

WHERE I SPEAK:

I've delivered keynotes in 35+ countries for audiences up to 8,000+, including:

• Three World Economic Forum Annual Meetings in Davos.
• Nordic Business Forum (one of 12 speakers, alongside President Obama).
• Global Leadership Summit (the world's largest leadership conference).
• Top-ranked business schools: IMD, Duke, St. Gallen.

My keynotes do more than lift the room. Audiences don’t just feel motivated; they leave equipped. Expect sharp stories, humor in the right places, clear science, and practical tools your people will use long after the applause.

Clear. Practical. Memorable.

Clients book me for annual meetings, leadership summits, sales kick-offs, and executive retreats: events where they want substance, delivered with energy.

If your organization is looking for inspiration, proven frameworks and field-tested tools that protect focus, build capacity, and improve execution when the pressure is on, I would love to hear from you.

Dr James Hewitt

Performing under pressure isn't something you're born with. 

It's a skill you can develop.

Sunglasses on. Jetlag plan in place. I’m back on the road and kicking off 2026 with a trip to the US for a keynote, followed by a few days at CES in Las Vegas. 

The keynote, for a Sales Kickoff (SKO) event, is all about how we can perform at our best when the pressure is highest.

I’ll be taking a dose of my own medicine over the next few days with three simple tactics:

1. A pre-performance routine

A morning workout + a few minutes of breathwork to shift my physiology before I step on stage (PMID: 30245619).

2. Micro-recovery during the day.

Idle time is not a waste of time. I’ll be intentional about creating gaps where my brain can connect dots (PMID: 37167968).

3. A helpful interpretation of stress. 

I’ll remind myself that stress is a signal that what I'm doing matters. The goal isn't to eliminate it, it's to use it (PMID: 28120622).

With the right preparation, we can ensure that the best of us shows up when it counts.

What's your go-to tactic before a high-pressure moment?

No alternative text description for this image

The human performance myth that drives me nuts? 

That we have to optimise every moment.

•⁠ ⁠Podcasts at double speed
•⁠ Back-to-back meetings.
•⁠"Just quickly" replying in every gap.

I've been guilty of all three.

However, while it looks like productivity, most of the time, it's productivity theatre, because meaningful output doesn't come from more minutes filled. 

It comes from better ideas.

And better ideas don't arrive when your brain is treated like a machine.

They arrive when we create space for "Random Episodic Silent Thought" (REST): quiet moments when your mind is free of inputs and allowed to wander (PMID: 21694961).

In that downtime, our brains connect dots we didn't even know were related.
This is why breaks create breakthroughs.

Here’s an experiment I encourage you to try this week.

Leave a 10-minute gap between two meetings. Protect it like it matters. 
No phone. No inbox. Just you and your thoughts.

Where could you stop optimising and start creating space for your best thinking?

The biggest health and performance upgrade probably isn’t another supplement or protocol; it’s another person.

My social media and news feeds are full of ‘health tips’ and ‘hacks’ at this time of year.

But while we chase optimisation, supplements, bio-whatever, many people are neglecting one of the most protective behaviours: investing in relationships.

One in ten (!) people say they have no close friends (Goddard, 2023).

Half of adults report feeling lonely, with some of the highest rates among young adults (contrary to the popular image of loneliness as primarily an elderly person’s burden) (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023).

Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of premature death by 26 to 29% (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023).

That should stop us mid-scroll.

I have a simple experiment we could all try: message one friend you've been meaning to reconnect with.

Put a walk or coffee in the diary. Not next month. This week or next.

If connection is so important, why do we keep deprioritising it?

275 interruptions a day. 

That's how often the average employee’s attention is hijacked during a typical workday.

Meetings, emails, or pings pop up and distract us every two minutes (according to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index).

No wonder 64% of people say they don't have enough time to get their work done, despite working longer hours.

The data paint a clear picture:

→ 60% of meetings are now ad hoc, not scheduled.
→ Messages outside the 9-to-5 are up 15% year-on-year.
→ Work technology stress affects nearly a third of employees 
(PMID: 39639298)

And it creates a negative spiral: the more reactive we become, the more our day fragments, and the more everything feels urgent.

Our best thinking gets squeezed into the cracks.

Try this for five days:

→ Close the inbox by default. (If it's open, it's whispering “check me”).
→ Batch email into 2-3 windows: Triage, reply, file, done. No ‘inbox grazing’.
→ Set expectations with your signature: "I check email at 9:00, 12:00, and 16:00. If urgent, call."

We don't need more willpower. 

We need fewer open loops.

What's harder for you, continuous interruption, or trusting you won't miss something?

Resistance training doesn't just protect your muscles.

It might also protect your brain from cognitive decline.

A study compared resistance training with computerised cognitive training to see which better protected brain health (PMID: 31978826).

The result: resistance training, not brain training, led to significant cognitive improvements and protected brain regions vulnerable to degeneration.

Even more striking: the protection lasted up to a year after the training ended.

In a world where dementia affects 47 million people, this finding matters.

We already know resistance training is essential for physical health as we age. 

Being in the top 25% of muscle mass for your age is a significant predictor of longevity (PMID: 24561114)

But the brain benefits are less widely known, and arguably just as important.
I'm reminding myself of this research today.

On days when my motivation dips, knowing I'm investing in my brain as well as my body helps.

Is resistance training part of your routine?

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The Battle

Sara Roberts

Dr James Hewitt

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Sara Roberts's LinkedIn Performance

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