Dr. Hazel MacTavish-West

Dr. Hazel MacTavish-West, BScAgric(Hons), PhD

CEO and Co-Founder Seedlab Australia, and Seedlab Tasmania

Hazel is a strong believer in ‘together we are more’ and in 2019 Hazel had a vision to help start-up businesses start, scale and grow. This vision led to Hazel founding Seedlab Tasmania, an incubator and accelerator program to support start-up Tasmanian agri-businesses to start, scale and grow. This program continues, supporting businesses producing a wider range of consumer products. Hazel’s contagious passion combined with the high economic and social impact delivered by the accelerator program drew interest from the Woolworths Group. In 2021, the Woolworths Group committed to $4M of funding to help small businesses and Founders become retail-ready and pitch to national retailers. Seedlab Australia was born. As co-Founder and CEO of Seedlab Australia, with her business and life partner Darren West, Hazel leads an Executive team of trusted advisors, nurtures a connected community of over 400 Founders and has made dreams real for Australian entrepreneurs. Prior to Seedlab, Hazel spent most of her career as a curious food scientist working on diverse and award-winning projects including flavours for dried cheese snacks and gin, converting oysters into sauce and vodka. Hazel consulted to many agri-food businesses and she still regularly writes articles and provides media commentary. In recognition of her success, Hazel was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and Hazel and Darren a Tasmanian Telstra HTC Start Up Business Award. Hazel has a PhD from University of Tasmania and a Bachelor of Science, Agriculture from University of Sydney. She is a member of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science & Technology; Chartered Agriculturalist, Australian Association of Agricultural Consultants and Australian Institute of Food Science & Technology.