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 manufactu ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

known for having developed the

Beryl Beryl ( ) is a mineral composed of beryllium aluminium Silicate minerals#Cyclosilicates, silicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2(SiO3)6. Well-known varieties of beryl include emerald and Aquamarine (gem), aquamarine. Naturally occurring Hex ...

(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 have been popularly known as Boris Bikes, after Boris Johnson who was Mayor of London when the scheme began o ...

(the London bike rental scheme).

Early life and education

Brooke attended

Royal High School, Bath Royal High School Bath is a private day and boarding school for girls located in Bath, Somerset, England. Established in 1998 from the merger of two older schools, the Royal School (founded in 1864) and Bath High School (founded in 1875), it e ...

until 2003. She began a course in physics at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

but abandoned it to instead study

product design Product design is the process of creating new Product (business), products for businesses to sell to their customers. It involves the generation and development of ideas through a systematic process that leads to the creation of innovative products ...

in Brighton.

Beryl Laserlights

Beryl laserlights are bicycle lights which project an image of a bicycle onto the road ahead of the rider, to improve safety by alerting other users when the bicycle is in their blind spot or round a corner. Brooke 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 in Brighton 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 achieved university status in 1992. T ...

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, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

, gaining attention from

Transport for London Transport for London (TfL) is a local government body responsible for most of the transport network in London, United Kingdom. TfL is the successor organization of the London Passenger Transport Board, which was established in 1933, and His ...

as well as securing funding from the family of

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate who co-founded the Virgin Group in 1970, and controlled 5 companies remaining of once more than 400. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneu ...

. 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 were 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 were awarded a ...

; "For Services to the Economy and Transport". Her company,

, 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 (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

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 British women inventors Product designers Living people Alumni of the University of Brighton People educated at the Royal High School, Bath 21st-century women inventors Members_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire