Sarah Wood is a digital entrepreneur, author and tech ambassador, and the co-founder and former CEO of the global video advertising marketplace Unruly. She has been named City AM Entrepreneur of the Year and Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year.
Wood established Unruly in 2006, with a goal of transforming advertising for the better and with commitments to diversity, wellbeing and inclusion. Leveraging a data-driven approach, Unruly delivers high quality targeting of video ads, and was acquired by News Corp in 2015. Wood has also enjoyed a parallel career in academia, lecturing in American Studies at the University of Sussex and more recently in Screen Cultures at the University of Cambridge. Here she taught a module that focussed on many major trends of contemporary digital life, including meme culture, online identity politics and internet celebrity.
Wood has also served as a non-executive director at fashion retailer Superdry, and as a board member at City Ventures. She is an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust’s Women Supporting Women Programme, is a technology ambassador for London, and sits on the board of Tech Nation. She is the author of Stepping Up: How to Accelerate Your Leadership Potential, a career handbook for millennials emphasising the need for leaders who are digital, diverse and empathetic. She has been honoured with many awards, and has been included in the Computer Weekly Hall of Fame, Business Insider’s Coolest Women in Tech, and Variety’s 30 Execs to Watch. She was appointed an OBE in 2016.