Andrea Coleman

Co-Founder Riders for Health

Andrea Coleman Co-founded Riders for Health when she was 41. Until that time she had worked in football and motorcycle racing as a fundraiser and team manager . She is the mother of four children and now has two grandchildren .

Andrea grew up in London . She has no academic qualifications and found school hard and unrewarding spending as little time there as she could get away with.

Starting a social enterprise with no money and three small children was a crazy thing to do but having seen women dying in childbirth with no means to get to a hospital, in rural Africa, she felt there was no choice but find transport solutions. Planning for succession and transition was always something she considered of importance but somehow never found time or will to make it a priority. As a result the plan for her own future and the future of Riders were neglected and made the inevitable process a tough one. She wondered who she was with out Riders. ‘ It was part of me’ she says. Andrea wonders how she would have managed without the Wellbeing Project. ‘It saved me’. And Riders survived and flourished too under the brilliant new leadership of Kayode Ajayi from Nigeria. Andrea believes that what she learned along the way can be of use to others. Andrea, now 74, has recently founded Two Wheels for Life to continue support for Riders work and Co-founded The Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurship because elders are relevant and , if we are lucky, we all get there but the lessons of others to help to navigate it can only be of help.

She loves adventurous walks with her husband and Riders Co founder, Barry Coleman, riding motorcycles and spending time with her grandchildren.

Lesson number one from the Elders- begin planning succession from start up.