Britain’s trailblazing women honoured at First Women Awards
by WIN Admin — published in Press Releases
The winners of the 2010 First Women Awards, held in association with Lloyds Banking Group and supported by the CBI and Real Business, have been announced. Dame Mary Perkins, co-founder of Specsavers opticians, received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, with judges praising her "business acumen, ability to juggle family and professional commitments and her focus on giving to charitable organisations".
Dame Mary Perkins set up her first chain of opticians in the West Country in the seventies before selling it for £2m and moving to Guernsey. There, on a table-tennis table in her spare bedroom, she developed a visionary business idea – taking advantage of market deregulation, which allowed the optometry profession to advertise products and services for the first time. She grew her business using a partnership approach, whereby each store is a joint venture between the company and the individual optician – to great commercial success. Today, her 1,503 worldwide stores employ 126,000 members of staff and turn over an annual £1.36bn.
First Women Awards patron Sarah Brown told the audience she hopes to see a "rise in the still shamefully number of women on UK boards". She told the story of her Scottish grandmother who completed a degree before becoming a teacher: "She had to give that all up the minute she got married. Ladies, it doesn't have to be like that anymore." Judges included Chrissie Rucker, founder of the White Company, Gaynor Coley, managing director of The Eden Project and Margaret Heffernan, entrepreneur and writer.
The ceremony was attended by more than 450 guests including Home Secretary The Rt Hon Theresa May MP, Minister of State for Security Baroness Neville-Jones, Helen Alexander of the CBI, Fru Hazlitt, soon-to-be ITV’s managing director of commercial and online, and royal biographer Penny Junor.
Follow link to see full shortlist: http://fwa.realbusiness.co.uk/home/2010_shortlist_and_winners
Source: Prowess