Sarah is the business woman of the year
25/09/2010
Sarah Dunwell is Forward Lady’s first Business Woman of the Year. She beat off eight other regional business women to take the title at The Met Hotel in Leeds on Friday.
Sarah is chief executive officer of the Create Foundation - a social enterprise which has created 44 new jobs and 20 volunteering opportunities. It supports 29 vulnerable people with full-time permanent work, 20 within the business and nine within other local companies.
They provide high quality outside catering, learning food hygiene, catering and customer service skills. They also run Café Create in Leeds and Bradford, staff a “Found by Create” vintage clothes shop and dress agency, and FareShare West Yorkshire which redistributes surplus food from producers and retailers to feed vulnerable people.
Sarah left school at 16 and ran a successful catering business until founding CREATE in 2007 which provides jobs for people with a history of homelessness and rough sleeping.
Providing jobs
Many of their staff came to CREATE with backgrounds which made it difficult for them to find jobs, but with the skills they gain at CREATE, it helps them to move into work with other employers.
For every £1 which is invested in the CREATE Foundation, it produces £7.51 worth of social benefits, including savings on welfare benefits, reduced costs to the NHS, criminal justice system, and the health and environmental benefits of FareShare. They have also redistributed more than 186 tonnes of surplus food, and provided more than 444,000 meals for vulnerable people, while reducing CO2 emissions by more than 1000 tonnes.
Sarah also won the Not-for Profit business woman of the year, sponsored by East Coast.
The judges said of her: “Her entrepreneurial mind-set has been key to developing her company and diversifying it. The different arms of the business make enough profit to ensure that the business is sustainable and profits are put directly back into the business - which trains individuals and puts them back into the world of employment and into society. It is a social enterprise that proves profit is not a dirty word, but is in fact essential for the social enterprise to maintain its good work within the community.
Women in Business Awards Special Mention
The judges also gave a special mention to Claire Morley-Jones of HR180° who was the Home-Based Business Woman of the Year, sponsored by Hobbs, who came in a very close runner up.
Claire was told by a male competitor that her business would fail. Determined to prove him wrong, she has gone on to establish Yorkshire’s fastest growing HR consultancy from her home in Aberford.
Starting with just £2,000 working capital and three clients, she has built hr 180⁰ into a nine-strong team in the space of four years, almost doubling turnover and personnel in the past 12 months, despite the recession.
Her flexible approach to working has allowed her to secure high calibre candidates – all her staff is experienced, choosing to work for the company over competitors and higher salaries due to its innovative working structure. Many are mothers working from home, allowing them to balance both work and home life while still maintaining a professional career.
Etta Cohen founder of Forward Ladies paid tribute to the thousands of businesswomen in the region, who are playing an active role within businesses, or who are running their own companies, and contributing to the success of the regional economy.
She said: “We are celebrating the success of our worthy winners, but we were overwhelmed by the response to these first awards. Women play a key role in business and industry, as well as bringing up families and we wanted to celebrate their considerable achievements. All the entrants deserve to be congratulated.”
Find out who else won on the night