NaomiAfter over 10 years in the corporate space, Naomi decided to invest in herself and made the leap to launch her own business. She is the founder and CEO of Lesflicks, a film streaming platform which aims to build a diverse community of LBTQ fans and content creators from around the world.  

 

Moving into legal

Naomi Bennett joined the firm in October 2007 as a legal secretary in the banking team. It was her first job at a law firm, having previously worked at Knight Frank and Jones Lang LaSalle. “I really enjoyed making the move into legal. The role played to my key strengths, particularly my love of detail and I used to relish working on contracts – the longer the better. My time at the firm was a real growth period for me personally. I made a conscious effort to engage with all areas of the firm, working overtime in other departments so I could get to know more of my colleagues. When you work in business services in any organisation, it can sometimes be a little frustrating when you are judged by the role you perform rather than your skills and what else you may have to offer. However, with the support of friend and mentor, Laura Hodgson, I was given the opportunity to get involved in setting up the firm’s Pride employee network. Norton Rose Fulbright was the first firm I had worked for where there was such a network and my involvement added an extra layer to my working experience and allowed me to make an impact. In an employee network everyone in the room has a common goal so it allows you to break down those barriers that often exist between different areas of the business and different levels of seniority. I got to attend many interesting events and that helped me raised my own profile and build my confidence. I also found it very inspirational to hear other people’s stories and journeys within the network.”

Moving to make a difference

In March 2011 Naomi was looking for a new challenge and joined Legal & General working for the legal team and Company Secretary, and shortly after took a promotion to work for the Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Affairs Director as well as being back up support for their CEO and Chairman. “My time with Legal & General was great fun. I participated in, and supported lots of AGMs and realised how comfortable I was with people at all different levels of the organisation. I also assisted in setting up their LGBTQ+ network, and supported their new women’s network and the experience I had gained at Norton Rose Fulbright was invaluable. I knew the challenge of creating a business case for the networks and the importance of getting support from senior management. In 2015 I made the decision to leave Legal & General. I had suffered a bereavement and several other major life events in quick succession so I felt that I wasn’t able to give my bosses the support they really needed. I took six months off work in which time I was able to clear my head and decide what I really wanted to do. I realised I needed to pursue a different route so I took a freelance role in a small D&I company, Square Peg Media. This position fed my creativity and interests and I organised large events around alternative parenting and family planning, working with some fantastic organisations who were dedicated to helping alternative families to have their children. I also worked on the British LGBT Awards, worked on a new BAME project and was on the committee of LBWomen network. In my time there I made some very positive changes, however, whilst my confidence continued to grow, my financial situation did not so I made the difficult decision to leave and joined Dechert, once again as a legal secretary.”

Moving into movies

It was during Naomi’s time at Norton Rose Fulbright that she first set up a small community lifestyle website for the lesbian, bisexual & queer women community which she managed during her spare time. “I originally launched it as Planet London, but by 2016 the website had evolved into Planet Nation. One of the things I used to cover for the website was films and film festivals. I met a lot of filmmakers and learnt about their struggles to get funding and distribution for their films. Equally, I was interacting daily with members of my community who were craving film content more relevant to them. It was the combination of these factors that prompted me to speak to BFI Player who said that, while they would welcome more lesbian films on their platform, they didn’t feel there were enough of the quality and style they required, yet these films were struggling to get proper investment, a real catch 22 situation.

Hence Lesflicks was born. I took the concept of a lesbian specific streaming platform to BFI Flare with just a logo and a blank website and I was soon being offered films to stream. I spent a lot of time in 2019 creating events for lesbian and bi-sexual women to promote film content in cinemas with social interaction afterwards where they could engage over discussion of the films. These events proved extremely popular and successful and the streaming platform soft launched in September 2019. The opportunity of redundancy from Dechert in September 2020 spurred me on to make a real go of it and I can honestly say that Lesflicks has been my biggest learning curve so far. I am now running my own organisation with the help of numerous volunteers and, more recently, four interns. I have a portfolio of 90 clients and the platform now streams over 150 films and is increasing weekly. It is important to me that Lesflicks is based on community and collaboration. I run the platform as a social enterprise with a good pricing point for customers and proper returns to the filmmakers to allow that vital reinvestment in their next project. By empowering the filmmaker in this way and sharing valuable data with them, I have disrupted the traditional film streaming model. I have recently held a round of fund-raising which, although slightly daunting, was a big stride forward for Lesflicks and for me as an individual.”

Naomi has set up Sapphic Film Screenings and an individual and organisation affiliate scheme as well as a community partner rewards. We are delighted to say that Naomi’s hard work and dedication was rewarded with Lesflicks being shortlisted at the National Diversity Awards for the Community Organisation Award for LGBT.

We wish Naomi and Lesflicks the best of luck for the future.