The 15th Annual PRECIOUS Awards -Meet the Finalists
The 15th Annual PRECIOUS Awards take place on 24th November at The Waldorf, London. The Awards celebrate the achievements of some incredible women of colour and we are delighted to announce our finalists.
Start up Business supported by the British Library Business and IP Centre
Neo Percept IP
Stephanie Njoku
Neo Percept is as an Intellectual Property Law firm offering all IP services including trade marks, copyright, design, and patents. Customers can obtain free advice in an initial free consultation as well a number services packaged for the convenience of customers.
Neo Percept is as an Intellectual Property Law firm offering all IP services including trade marks, copyright, design, and patents. Customers can obtain free advice in an initial free consultation as well a number services packaged for the convenience of customers.
www.neopercept.co.uk
Little Scholars Playground
Natalie Bent
Little Scholars Playground is a diverse children’s book publisher and early years hub. Diversity and representation is at the core of what we do. My mission is to create engaging, diverse children’s literature and learning resources.
https://littlescholarsplayground.com/
BIND London
Kayleigh Benoit
BIND London is a high fashion fitness and athleisure brand, specialising in headwear that not only protects against sweat, heat and moisture, but is the first brand of its kind to cater for all hair types and textures.
https://www.bindlondon.com
Social Entrepreneur of the Year Sponsored by Diva
Danielle Bridge
ABC Life Support C.I.C
ABC Life Support CIC is a physical and mental health first aid training provider delivering
training for all regardless of socioeconomic and geographical limitations.
Zara Muirhead
Love Literacy UK & Love Education C.I.C.
A learning community where experienced teachers and staff are both tutors and mentors,
training and supporting students to excel.
Lorraine Copes
Be Inclusive Hospitality CIC
A learning & development initiative to support the upward social mobility of employees
and entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry.
Small Business of the Year sponsored by Santander
Social Fixt
Mercedes Benson
With over 8 years experience working within the entertainment industry, London based DJ, Partnerships Manager and now social entrepreneur, Mercedes Benson, has found herself on a social mission to solve the creative industries lack of black representation.
In 2017, Mercedes Benson launched SocialFixt – a recruitment and job-board platform aiming to connect black talent to career opportunities within the creative industry. Since then, it has grown into a burgeoning online community with a combined reach of 20,000, with resources ranging from CV workshops to mentorship and online/IRL events on employability. Partners so far include Red Bull, Unilever & Warner Music.
The aim for SocialFIXT is to grow a more diverse and fair representation of black talent within the workplace. Not just entry level, but every level.
https://www.socialfixt.org
Thc Primary Care
Tara Humphrey
Tara Founded THC in 2015 and has 20 years of experience in business development and operations management covering the public and private sector and has an MBA in Leadership and Management in Health Care. Tara is passionate about helping people and giving them the tools, time and support to develop their ideas and bring them to fruition.
NAYA LONDON
Vanessa Fernandes
NAYA LONDON is a Cosmetic retailer & Distributor. In 2006 the company was started by then 19 years old university student Vanessa Fernandes as a response to her frustration for the lack of products suitable for Afro hair in salons across London. The company initially supplied salons only, selling a range of professional products catering to a variety of hair textures and then expanded to the retail market via an online store that supplies customers all over the world. NAYA LONDON is committed to advocating for diversity in the industry as well as using the Beauty business a way of empowering women by supporting female owned, black owned, small independent brands alongside well-known brands.
Creative Business of the Year
Jasmine Richards
Founder of Storymix
Storymix is a fiction packager. It works like a movie production company but for books.
Tianna J Williams
Tianna J Williams Photography
Birmingham based photographer specialising in pregnancy and post- pregnancy,
women and children as subjects.
Bespoke Binny
Natalie Manima
Bespoke Binny is a British based business offering a range of handmade homeware and gifts items made from West African cloth.
Outstanding Woman in Public Sector
Leonie Huie BEM
Teacher -Bishop Challoner Catholic federation of schools
Tanya Robinson OBE
Programme Director of the Race Action Programme.
Her Majesties Prison and Probation Service
Sunita Toor
Head of Human Rights & Social Justice, Helena Kennedy Centre for
International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University
The Leadership Award sponsored by the Open University
Kayleigh Oliver
Immerse Learning Ltd
Kayleigh is the Quality Assurance (QA) and Release manager for Immerse, a virtual
reality (VR) company that builds a web-based platform for VR applications and a Unity
software development kit (SDK).
Ayo Greaves
Occupational Therapist (OT) within the NHS specialising in mental health
SLAM NHS Trust
Uk Virtual School
UKVS offers a flexible online British Education adapted for the modern world, catering
for Year 1 to iGCSEs for Home Educating families, Expats, and World Schoolers.
Social Advocate of the Year
Nadine White
The Independent newspaper’s first dedicated race correspondent.
Reporting about issues relating to race, and amplifying black perspectives in particular.
Eni Timi-Biu
Create Your Table
It is a development platform and network that
provides capital, space and support for Black food and drink entrepreneurs.
Kym Oliver & Jumoke Abdullahi
The Triple Criples
A platform for sharing stories and talking about the three levels of discrimination that are faced by
Black, disabled women.
Outstanding Women in Stem
Paulette Watson
Academy Achievers
Paulette is founder of Academy Achievers, an organisation working with children and
young people ages 5-19 year olds, who are from marginalised communities. Currently
leading in Science Technology Engineering Art Math activities. The #BeMe project aims
to raise 1 million Black girls aspirations in STEM related careers.
Charlene Hunter
Coding Black Females
Charlene is the founder of Coding Black Females the largest community of Black women in tech in the UK. Coding Black Females’ mission is to provide opportunities for Black female developers to meet familiar faces, develop themselves, network, receive support and build relationships through having regular meetups.
Emma and Charlotte Robertson – Founders –Digital Awareness
As digital rights activists, the sisters campaign in the media, in parliament
and in schools and organisations around the world to empower young people
to survive and thrive online,
Outstanding Woman in Professional Services sponsored by Baker McKenzie
Sultana Tafadar
Ranked in the Legal 500, Sultanais a highly experienced human rights, international law and criminal justice barrister. She has acted in some of the mostlegally significant, ground breaking cases in the UK, most of which make headlines. She carries out a vast amount of human rights work, often on a pro bono basis, that has a significant impact on the lives of others.
Adeife Onwuzulike, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Confederation of British
Industry(CBI)
Adeife drives the internal CBI D&I work from creating and implementing their D&I
strategy that is embedded into every part of the business and the business strategy.
She is the stakeholder and partnerships lead for the CBI Change the race ratio
campaign focused on accelerating racial representation in business from board level to
junior staff.
Sally Penn MBE
Manchester based Sally is a practicing Common Law Barrister
specialising in Public Law with an emphasis on vulnerability and also in Employment
Law. Outside of her Legal Career Sally works tirelessly to improve equality, diversity
and inclusion at all levels of society, nationally and internationally. She is founder of
Women in the Law UK and hosts the Talking Law podcast which is currently approaching 72,000
downloads and listeners.