Inspirational role models from across the North have been honoured at a special awards ceremony celebrating gender equality.
The Northern Power Women Awards, which highlights the achievements of women and working together to accelerate gender diversity, was held to coincide with International Women’s Day, having been cancelled last year due to the coronavirus crisis.
The awards saw Zandra Moore, chief executive of Leeds IT firm Panintelligence named Mentor of the Year while and Michelle Hands, an engineer at the city's Nut Job Ltd, named Agent of Change.
Dragons’ Den star Sara Davies, founder and creative director at County Durham firm Crafter’s Companion, was named the Outstanding Entrepreneur, while Beckie Taylor, CEO at Bury firm Tech Returners won the Transformational Leader award. Liverpool’s InnovateHer won the Small Organisation award.
Other winners from the night were Freema Chambers, CO and founder of the Community School Clothing Scheme, who picked up the Person with Purpose award, and the Halo Project Charity, which works with the victims, survivors and stakeholders of domestic, sexual and violent abuse, which was named Innovation winner.
Greater Manchester saw a slew of further awards head its way with Elicia Curtis, director at The Reign Collective CIC, and Bianca Robinson, chief executive at CEO Sleepout UK, named joint winners of the One to Watch category; Informed Solutions Ltd taking home the Medium Organisation award; and global recruitment business, the Page Group, handed the Large Organisation trophy.
Simone Roche, founder and chief executive of Northern Power Women said it had been “devastating” to cancel last year’s event with just four days to go due to the first coronavirus lockdown.
But she added: “The sheer passion of the NPW community plus the volume and quality of nominations continues to exceed all of our expectations, as we have received a record-breaking 1,480 nominations, featuring outstanding people with some truly incredible stories to tell.
“I know our 70 judges have an increasingly hard task in shortlisting and selecting winners as the quality, and quantity, of entries grows year after year.”
