Laura Burley
Global General Manager of Government Relations and Public Policy, Xero
Laura Burley is the Global General Manager of Government Relations and Public Policy at Xero — the small business platform trusted by over 1.32 million small businesses. At Xero, the mission is simple but powerful: to make life better for people in small businesses, their advisors and communities around the world. Laura's role is to ensure that mission shapes policy, and that the voices of small businesses are heard loud and clear at the highest levels of governments around the world.
Laura has over twenty years of experience championing small businesses, technology, health and education in the political and policy arena. Her career has spanned the UK Parliament — where she worked for the Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee — to the charity sector, where she led successful campaigns on behalf of Breast Cancer Care. Before joining Xero in 2022, she led the Government Affairs team at The Open University, playing a pivotal role in advocating for lifelong learning initiatives and championing skills and apprenticeships policy for small businesses.
At Xero, Laura has been at the forefront of leading the campaign to embed financial confidence in education. Xero's Financial Confidence Taskforce, expertly chaired by The Entrepreneurs Network, is calling on the UK Government to radically rethink how financial literacy and enterprise are taught — from the classroom to the workplace — so that starting and growing a business is an aspirational, viable path for everyone, regardless of background. She is also proud to have played a formative part in campaigning for a clampdown on late payment practices.
Laura is a founding board member of Women in Public Affairs. She joins The Entrepreneurs Network as an Adviser committed to ensuring policymakers understand what it really takes to start, grow and sustain a business in modern Britain.
Why do you support the work of The Entrepreneurs Network?
At Xero, we believe small businesses are the engine of the economy — and that belief has to mean something beyond the platform we build. It has to mean showing up in rooms where policy is made and making sure the people who actually run businesses have a seat at the table.
The Entrepreneurs Network does exactly that. It bridges the gap between founders and policymakers with rigour, evidence and genuine ambition. Too often, policy is made at a distance from the realities of running a business. The Entrepreneurs Network is critical in changing that dynamic.
What particularly resonates with me is The Entrepreneurs Network's commitment to making Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business through excellent research and contributions to evidence-based policy making. At Xero, we see every day the challenges that entrepreneurs face: cash flow pressures, regulatory burden, late payments and access to capital.
I'm also passionate about ensuring that entrepreneurship is open to everyone. Xero's Financial Confidence Taskforce has shown us that low financial literacy is locking the door on entrepreneurial ambition — particularly for people from underrepresented backgrounds. The Entrepreneurs Network shares that conviction: that the benefits of Britain's startup ecosystem should be available to founders from every part of the country and every walk of life. That's why I'm proud to support this work as an Adviser.
What research should more people read?
The Entrepreneurs Network's Job Creators series is essential reading. The finding that 54% of Britain's 100 fastest-growing companies have a foreign-born founder is striking and the policy implications for how we approach immigration and talent attraction are enormous. Founders from around the world are creating jobs and growth here in the UK, and that story needs to be told more forcefully in Westminster.
Of course, I would also share The Master Key White Paper published alongside Xero and Enterprise Nation. It makes a compelling case for a Unique Business Identifier (Digital Business ID). Fragmented business data is an invisible tax on small businesses. Forcing founders to navigate a labyrinth of disconnected portals costs time and money that could be reinvested in growth. This is the kind of practical, infrastructure-level change that could make an enormous difference.
Why is the UK an attractive place to grow a business?
The UK has genuine, structural strengths as a place to build a business — and it's important to say that clearly, because the story is sometimes told with more pessimism than the evidence warrants.
Britain has world-class universities, a deep pool of financial and professional services talent, and one of the most dynamic startup ecosystems in the world. The fact that over half of our fastest-growing companies are co-founded by people who chose to come here and build their businesses on British soil says something powerful about our underlying appeal.
We now just need to work a little bit harder to remove some of the barriers, listen to founders and unleash that growth!