Caridon Executive Director selected as mentor for 2022 Santander Breakthrough Women Business Leaders’ Mentoring Programme

8th March 2022

Santander UK’s programme is designed to support women in business across the UK, pairing budding female entrepreneurs with established business leaders across all sectors, business sizes and geographies. Having been selected as a mentor from the competitive application process, Lora will use the materials and a framework provided by Santander and Moving Ahead to work with her two selected mentees. Through regular contact and sharing her experience, she will help them to establish areas of development that enable and foster business growth and professional development over the nine-month programme.

Having left school at 16, Lora Bencheikh started her first full-time job as assistant manager for Richoux Restaurants in Piccadilly. This led to a further four years’ experience in banqueting and restaurant management with Whitebread Breweries and ASK restaurants. At 18, Lora bought her first three-bedroom property and at just 20 years old, alongside her brothers, Lora bought and set up her own freehold restaurant.

In 2009, with experience in both residential and commercial property, Lora took the opportunity to join a start-up company, Caridon Property Ltd. Today, as well as working her way up to the position of executive director, she has also bought and sold her own small portfolio of buy to let properties in South London.

Commenting on her appointment as a mentor in the 2022 Santander Breakthrough Women Business Leaders’ Mentoring Programme, Lora says:

“In the week that we celebrate International Women’s Day, I am absolutely delighted to have been selected as a mentor for this programme. A big part of my professional role at the start was acquisition of properties and new business for Caridon, for the last 5 years I have been more focused on the overall Operations, I manage a large team across the various regions and have been involved in the training and mentoring of many of our current leaders, as a team we have evolved Caridon into a £35m turnover business and £200m asset value, 2,000 tenants with over 135 full time staff which include 5 females at Director and Board level.

I hope that by sharing my experience, I will empower and inspire my two mentees to take the next step on their own journey to success as strong female business leaders.”

Lora will have regular contact with her two mentees over the next nine months, helping them to think differently and innovatively, to decide business objectives and make tracks in achieving these.