The big day had finally arrived for the 8 student finalists
who were in the running to become the winner of our #IAmEnterprising project
that we have been running with the City of Liverpool College. The setting for
the day was the incredibly grand boardroom at the Learning Exchange Centre on
Roscoe Street.
Our 8 finalists were: Kiara Makoo with her Photography and
Graphic Design Business, Kate Johnson with The Chocolate Gallery, Olga Bokova
with her Accountancy Practice, Jessica Pierce with 4 Liverpool, Buy Liverpool,
Suzie Higgins with her handmade phone cases, Ashley Rose Standish with Rare
Rose Designs, Daniel Curran and John Wilson in a joint partnership with Front
Row Plumbing Services and Michael Patrick with his Photography business.
Although the students were bound to be nervous as we had
asked the to prepare a 10 minute presentation to be followed by a question and
answer session from a panel of judges, they had been well-prepared with our
Business Boot Camp day and drop-in sessions in the run up to the big day.
We had a fantastic panel of judges, who were representatives
from our sponsors and partners. These were Donal Bannon from our lead sponsor
Morecrofts Solicitors, Darren McLeod from Agent Marketing, Heather Heaton from
City of Liverpool College and our own Enterprise Director, Jackie Williams.
The standard of the student’s presentations was extraordinarily
high, and the judges knew they were going to be in for a tough decision when
they had to decide the overall winner. After much deliberation and a last
minute change, it was decided that the standard was so high that there would be
three runners up instead of two, and an overall winner.
Our fantastic runners up were Kiara Makoo, Daniel Curran and
John Wilson, and Ashley Rose Standish, and the overall winner of the #IAmEnterprising
Championship was Kate Johnson with The Chocolate Gallery, who gave a great
presentation, and who the judges all agreed would benefit greatly from the
prize package, and be growing her business substantially very soon!
The #IAmEnterprising Project has been fantastic, from the
very first drop-ins with the students, to the action-packed Business Boot Camp,
all the way through to the Championship Day. We, at The Women’s Organisation
would like to thank our sponsors, Morecrofts Solicitors, Agent Marketing, Chic
Networking, Downtown in Business Liverpool and our partner City of Liverpool
College.