Foluke is the future...apparently!

I was delighted to be named as one of Courvoisier's “The Future 500” a list of the country's top achievers across ten wide-ranging categories.
Whats more I was chuffed to be named as one of the top 100 'Ones to Watch' one of the few women of colour in the list. The full list of 500 was published the Observer newspaper and Courvoisier hosted a spectacular party for the Future 500 at The House of St. Barnabus in Soho in December.

Here's the blurb:

Launched in 2007 The Future 500 (F500) is a network created by Courvoisier, designed to support and promote Britain's most sparkling talent across the UK. Selected by a panel of inspirational judges, all members have achieved significant success in their field - be it as an artist, businessman, entrepreneur or activist
Courvoisier has created a platform for Britain’s brightest talents to connect, share their vision, inspire one another and ultimately collaborate to achieve even greater success.

For me it was a great way to end a really great year and I'm really looking forward to finding out what being in the network involves.

Happy New Year to you all!!
x

And the winners are...

Oh what a night!

The 2008 Precious Awards was an evening to saviour and I'm still reeling from the positivity and warmth this night of celebrating some of the UK's top Black and Asian female entrepreneurs produced.

Our hosts for the evening were Hannah Pool, Guardian writer and author and Rasheed Ogunlaru, the Precious business coach, who opened the event with messages of support from David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Baroness Amos.

The evening proceeded in style with an entertaining, warm and humorous speech from Jennette Arnold, leader of The London Assembly. Recently named as one of the most powerful black women in the UK Jennette had the audience almost entranced as she shared her story of her rise to the top. And then the awards began…

Seeing each of the winners head up to the podium to receive their award reminded me of how difficult the judging process had been. There was lots of healthy discussion and debate between the judges about the winners of each category, which only served to emphasise the high quality of the nominations we received. What was most telling to me was that so many of our winners were so surprised to be recognised. This enforced for me why the Precious Awards are necessary to play a role in celebrating the dedication, passion and sheer hard work that Black and Asian female entrepreneurs display to achieve success.

And the winners were:
Best Business: Samantha Alfred, Jivana Style,
Creative Business of the Year: Imtaz Khaliq: Imtaz Bespoke Tailor,
Best Service Business Paschorina J. Mortty: The One Event,
Best Start Up Business: Annick Adjo: Atelier Annick Ltd,
Best Social Enterprise, Abiola Okubanjo and Yemisi Gibbons: Forefront Training
Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Samata Angel: Samata's Muse,
Inspiring Leader within the Workplace, Nike Folayan: Mott Macdonald UK

The Precious Entrepreneur of the Year: The Judges Prize, went to Natasha Faith and Semhal Zemikael of La Diosa two young incredibly focused inspiring women whose luxury jewellery brand is set to soar even higher. I'm so proud of them and all our finalists and winners.

We're already planning the 2009 Precious Awards... I hope that you will be able to join us.

C'mon lets celebrate

Things are looking great for this year's Precious Awards; we have some great sponsors, a lovely venue and some special judges including Sonita Alleyne, CEO of cross-platform production company Somethin' Else(which is the largest independent radio producer in the UK and a top ten producer of TV entertainment) and Marcia Williams, Head of Diversity at the UK Film Council.

Once again, it was really bought home to me why there is still a need for initiatives such as the Precious Awards.
A few days ago I was chatting to a female entrepreneur via MSN:
"Your name came up just the other day" I said,
"Oh really?" she asked, "Why?"
I explained to her that someone had nominated her or was about to nominate her for a Precious Award.
"Oh no" she said, “I am sure that there are other people out there more deserving than me. Maybe I'll enter next year."
This woman, lets call her Annie, has been running her successful business for about five years, she has a healthy turnover and is respected in her industry yet was reluctant to come forward for some recognition.

"I think the awards are great" Annie said, "I just don't think I am ready yet."

I was disappointed but not surprised. There are so many women of colour running successful businesses up and down the country, yet they feel unsure or nervous of accepting recognition.

The Awards are not just about celebrating entrepreneurs, they are about creating role models too. We are trying to create a legacy, where young girls and women are surrounded by the stories of successful women who look like them too. Where its commonplace to hear of a women of colour setting up her first, second or third business or heading to the top in corporate UK, and firmly believe that they can do it too.
That's what the awards are all about, the Precious Awards are about women like 'Annie'. So, if you know of a woman of colour, who is running a great business or is steering a leadership role within corporate UK, then nominate her today. Just head to: www.preciousawards.com

Testing Times

At Precious HQ, we've just launched a social networking aspect to the main site: The Precious Network. Why? Well, we've had lots of requests from our members, asking how they can connect with each other online and we always try to do as our members ask!

New launches are always exciting, but no matter how big or small the venture, there are always those niggling worries. In this case they were, in no particular order: Will anyone sign up to the network? Will it be genuinely useful for our members? Does it detract from the main Precious brand? How long do we leave it before we move it to another platform?

As we test out the site, I am also thinking of the other areas that Precious is looking to branch into and its made me more determined to get on and just have a go! That's the great thing about being in business, you just HAVE to try different things and go on new entrepreneurial adventures. That's what it's all about.

If the idea of connecting with some Precious women appeals, then please do sign up to the Precious Network here. Enjoy!

Get a (Public) Life

This year marks two important dates for women’s suffrage in the UK. The 90th anniversary of women over 30 getting the right to vote and the 80th anniversary of women getting the vote aged 21 on a par with men

It was with this in mind that I attended an event hosted by Harriet Harman, the Minister for Women and Equality, to launch a new taskforce to help more women of colour to become councillors, and so make councils more representative of the community they serve. We’ve reported on this here.

This is an initiative that I'm delighted to support, but I would take this further and say we need to get more women of colour onto public bodies too. Public bodies have a role in shaping and influencing our society and making decisions that affect all our lives. Surely these decisions are more effective when made by those who reflect the society we live in?

Whether it’s the National Consumer Council, or regional bodies such as Havering Primary Care, the more women of colour we see in positions of power like this, the more our voices will be heard and the diversity of our society will be properly reflected. What’s equally important is that young people also realise that this is another route to leadership that is open to them too.

Precious will be working with the Government Equalities Office to put Harriet Harmon’s initiative in the spotlight, and we'll make sure the issue of women on public bodies is high on the agenda too!

The Precious Awards 2008

I'm already looking forward to the Precious Awards which take place in November during Enterprise Week. It’s our chance to celebrate women of colour entrepreneurs, and show how women in business are really making their mark on UK plc. That's why I launched Precious; to celebrate the achievements of women of colour and the awards are a great arena to do that. There’s already been a lot of interest in the event and with a fashion show, high profile patrons, and some really exciting new categories in the offing; it looks set to be even better this year.

As many of you will know, the preparation for a ceremony of this kind starts early and over the last few weeks, have been putting the call out for sponsors and supporters for the event - getting sponsorship isn't easy, even in these days of corporations putting 'diversity at the heart of their agenda'. But in a strange kind of way I have been enjoying the process; putting together the proposal, tweaking said proposal, working with our branding specialist to make the proposal look good(thanks Rene!), the phone calls, emails, and other conversations, its all been an experience.

Since last year Precious Awards, I have been watching the progress of our winners with interest. The Precious Entrepreneur of the Year; Jessica Huie of Colorblind cards, has simply gone from strength to strength, her business has recently launched in the States and she made a confident and assured appearance as one of the experts on the BBC's Apprentice - You're Fired show a couple of weeks ago. Natasha Faith and Semhal Zemikael, the two young women behind luxury jewellery brand La Diosa, and winner of Best Start Up, stock their products in Harrods, have been profiled in Fashion bible Vogue and are being hailed as a big luxury brand of the future. I am really proud of all our winners!

I cannot wait to discover the entrepreneurial gems set to enter the awards this year; my fervent wish is that the Precious Awards truly gives them a chance to shine.

I'm so excited!

There are only a few people in the world that can get me out of bed before 7 in the morning, but Steve Moore is definitely one of them.

Steve is the director of Policy UnPlugged, he's a great guy, who really defines the meaning of a connector and he is one of the friendliest, most genuine people, I have ever come across. Anyway more about him another time, the point is that Steve sent me an invite to the launch of a new monthly breakfast event called One Morning, and I shifted myself out of bed and went along.

The premise of One Morning is that each month three individuals are given ten minutes to answer one question, fill the room with ideas and then take questions from the floor. Then there's some intense networking over breakfast and by 10.15 you are on your way back to your office, desk or laptop!

The launch question was: What happens next? (a question that I ask myself continually) and the speakers were Kevin Anderson, Blogs Editor at The Guardian, Jeremy Ettinghausen Head of Digital Publishing at Penguin and Matt Locke a Commissioning Editor for education at Channel 4.

I was drawn in from the start as I listened to Jeremy talk about the future of publishing, the promise of the first E-book and a vision of a 'book' for the future that you can listen to on your ipod, then plug into your car on your drive into work and then continue reading on line at the office. Wow!

I was intrigued by Kevin's contribution on the so-called death of newspapers, how to find the perfect online business model, citing Tech Crunch as a prime example, and how and why more and more companies are spending their advertising budget online; (great news for Precious) and I was really impressed with Matt's contribution that covered art, how young people use tools such as MSN and how it all fits in to the future of social media.

The event took me back to when I was working in the ITN New Media department about 10years ago, when the web was relatively new in the UK. I was part of a young team, who were very passionate about our work, and who were driven by being part of some truly innovative stuff. They were challenging and interesting times. We were stick in a back office, spoken of disparagingly by some of our colleagues, (I remember the ITN Royal correspondent wandering into our office muttering "What is the point of this Internet stuff anyway?") But we didn't care, we knew we were involved in something fresh, new, and exciting and as soon as everyone else in the company caught on, they would be as passionate about the web as we were...heady days indeed.

One Morning reminded me of that feeling of excitement and newness, and so, for that reason, I'll be a regular from now on