Motivational Monday – Lola’s Cupcakes Founder
Ahead of our Class of 2000’s silver reunion, Lola’s Cupcakes co-founder, Victoria Jossel Nurtman, explains how South Hampstead helped to foster her ambitious mindset.
Born to a South African family, Victoria moved to the UK when she was 8 years old and enrolled at South Hampstead at age 11. While quite a culture shock at first, Victoria quickly settled into school life and fell in love with the community of girls and teachers. Her involvement with the Young Enterprise programme was particularly formative, as she was able to try out unconventional methods, to push boundaries, and to experiment with computing in the early days of Y2K and the internet’s infancy. Victoria instinctively felt this very new frontier would become vital for businesses to get to grips with. One of the first businesses she set up with Young Enterprise was importing pink keyboards and mice from Taiwan; the technology was so new and unfamiliar that her contacts in Taiwan assumed she was trying to import animals – she politely had to correct them that the ‘mice’ she was after were not the furry kind!
Victoria took Biology, Chemistry, and Maths at A Level. She remembers her Chemistry teacher Mr Ritchie in particular; she once achieved the highest mark on a class test, and he made such a song-and-dance about it that Victoria “felt like a chemistry genius” – a powerful moment of encouragement that shaped her decision to take Chemistry at A Level. She went on to pursue Computer Science at university, where the confidence fostered by her teachers, like Mr Ritchie, were helpful. There was a dramatic underrepresentation of female students in the cohort at the time; out of around 400 Computer Science students, only 20 were women. By the time Victoria graduated, she was one of only two women who hadn’t dropped out – a stark reminder of the immense pressure and acute lack of support for women in STEM fields.
Straight out of university, Victoria was hired by Goldman Sachs in a very competitive graduate programme. While the only female in her department, in a sector overwhelmingly populated by men, she really loved her time working in the technology department, and thrived under the mentorship of some incredible colleagues. Her four years at Goldman Sachs solidified her belief that technology was a force for good that could be utilised for really efficient, successful businesses; this got her thinking about starting Lola’s Cupcakes, a bakery business with her unique, technology-focused approach at its core.
Coming from a Computer Science rather than a baking background (she had to teach herself how to bake whilst working during the day at Goldman Sachs), Victoria leveraged technology in order to elevate Lola’s Cupcakes above its competitors. Through the creation of seamless online ordering systems and optimisation of the website’s user interface, Lola’s was able to grow extraordinarily quickly. By the time Victoria and her co-founder Romy Lewis sold Lola’s in 2011, the business had become a national brand, with storefronts all across London and concession stores in Selfridges and Topshop.
After selling the business, Victoria spent some time at home with her young family. During this period, she reflected on the importance of having really strong mentors and decided to explore some fun side projects, mentoring new businesses within the food space: Artisan chocolate business Cocomaya, James Middleton’s personalised-marshmallow company Boomf, and Blondie’s Kitchen. She also moved into café ownership, buying local Hampstead café Ginger & White with a friend in 2020 – an operation which continues to expand, with plans to provide online ordering for baked goods. Victoria particularly loves how personal and connected her business feels within the close-knit Hampstead community and is proud of her staff who know all their regulars so well. Seeing how small businesses are impacted by government policy at the ground level, Victoria says that her next venture is to move into the world of politics – she even teases her kids that one day she’ll become Prime Minister!
Reflecting on her career, Victoria credits a strong work ethic, supportive mentors, and a sense of ‘bluesky ambition’ as key to fuelling her success. She credits her time at South Hampstead in shaping her ability to pursue her goals without fear of failure; at school, she was always encouraged to flourish and be let loose, with no pigeon-holing or limitations – a mindset that’s stayed with her for life: “I can never work within the boundaries of the norm. I always have to be pushing for new things.”
We look forward to welcoming the Class of 2000 to our alumnae reunion on Sunday 23rd March as they celebrate 25 years since leaving South Hampstead.