Emily Sophie Hastings Brooke (born November 1985) is a British inventor,

industrial designer Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufact ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

known for having developed the Beryl (formerly Blaze) Laserlights used for

Santander Cycles Santander Cycles (formerly Barclays Cycle Hire) is a public bicycle hire scheme in London in the United Kingdom. The scheme's bicycles are popularly known as Boris Bikes, after Boris Johnson who was Mayor of London when the scheme began operati ...

(the London bike rental scheme).

Beryl Laserlights

She developed the laser as part of a project in her final year at the

University of Brighton The University of Brighton is a public university based on four campuses in Brighton and Eastbourne on the south coast of England. Its roots can be traced back to 1858 when the Brighton School of Art was opened in the Royal Pavilion. It achiev ...

and was entered into an entrepreneurship programme in Boston (funded by Santander). After graduating in 2011 she developed the project further by listing the concept on

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

, gaining attention from Transport for London as well as securing funding from the family of

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expresse ...

. Her firm, Blaze, was then successful in securing support from Santander who now use the lights on all of the bikes within the Santander Cycles scheme. In May 2018, following a lawsuit from a US registered company also with the name Blaze, Brooke changed her company name to Beryl. She was appointed MBE in the

2017 Birthday Honours The 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as p ...

; "For Services to the Economyand Transport". Her company,

Beryl Beryl ( ) is a mineral composed of beryllium aluminium silicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2Si6O18. Well-known varieties of beryl include emerald and aquamarine. Naturally occurring, hexagonal crystals of beryl can be up to several ...

, sells the "Laserlight" and a range of other cycle lights, and also operates dockless cycle sharing schemes in several cities around the UK.

Revent

In 2021, Brooke was one of the founding partners of Revent, an early-stage

venture capital fund Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

aiming to support "Founders who share our belief that the greatest and most important opportunity is ... to tackle a problem that truly matters".

References

External links

Beryl (formerly Blaze) website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brooke, Emily English industrial designers 1985 births 21st-century British inventors Product designers Living people Alumni of the University of Brighton Women inventors