Innovate UK Innovation Loans

Leo Castellanos is an investment and growth professional at Innovate UK with over a decade of experience in venture capital and technology innovation. He previously invested in early-stage and growth-stage startups at SAATCHiNVEST, focusing on SaaS, e-commerce, consumer technology, IoT, AI, and edtech sectors. Castellanos co-founded Comparabien, a Latin American financial product comparison platform that expanded to eight countries, and holds an Executive MBA in Finance and Strategy; he also lectures on venture capital and fundraising at business schools and serves as a speaker and judge in business plan competitions.

Chief Operating Officer and the contact for corporate partnership discussions.

Margarita Skarkou is a Senior Principal at DWS Group leading infrastructure private equity investments, with experience investing across seed-stage through buyout in companies spanning technology, sustainability, and infrastructure sectors. She serves as a Board Director advising scale-ups and government entities, and holds Non-executive positions with UKRI and Innovate UK's Credit Supervisory Committee. Skarkou holds an MEng in Civil Engineering and CIMA certification in Business Accounting.

Rodney Appiah, an early Black UK angel syndicate organizer, pooled Black professionals to back diverse founders and applies investment-banking rigor and later-stage growth experience to founder‑centric early rounds.