Leading women in business community recognised in King’s Birthday Honours list

A number of senior North West women in business and public life have been awarded honours in the King’s first birthday honours list.

Alison Ross, chair of Manchester Digital’s board and chief people and operations director at Manchester-based online car retailer, Auto Trader, has been awarded an MBE.

Liverpool businesswoman, Erika Rushton, will also receive an MBE. The 62 years old, described as a creative economist, is the co-founder of Kindred Liverpool City Region Community Interest Company.

There were MBE’s for Zoe Holland of Fletcher’s Solicitors, Cathy Parker, the director of the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, and for the assitant principal, finance, of Aquinas College in Stockport, Debbie Blackburn.

Also awarded an MBE was Lynn Willis from Sellafield, who as operations manager at the nuclear reprocessing plant was commended for her services to business and the nuclear industry.

All in all, 90 people from across the North West have been awarded honours for extraordinary service to their communities.

There’s a strong emphasis in HM The King’s first Official Birthday Honours List to include more recipients who contributed significant amounts of service to their local communities and the country as a whole. Many have been awarded for voluntary work – going above and beyond to help others, while asking for little recognition in return.

There’s also recognition that while talent is spread across the whole of the UK, opportunity is sometimes not. The North West is often underrepresented in the honours system, with the latest stats showing that only 7.9% of honours go to people in this area, despite it comprising 11% of the UK population.

Chris Oglesby

The most senior North West business figure recognised in the first of King Charles’ list is Chris Oglesby, property giant Bruntwood’s chief executive, for services to regeneration and charity, who will recieve an OBE.

He was appointed CEO of Bruntwood in 1999 and has overseen the growth of the business to one that owns over £1bn of commercial property across the city regions of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds with a further £1bn development pipeline across all four cities.

He also plays an active role in many public and private sector partnerships including CityCo, MIF, Manchester Oxford Road Corridor, the Business Leadership Council and Manchester Climate Change Forum.

He has also continued the charitable and philanthropic work his late father Michael Oglesby started with Bruntwood, donating 10% of its annual profits to charitable causes. He’s also a trustee of The Oglesby Charitable Trust, which works with more than 40 community based charities a year.

Tourism chief Andrew Stokes, the chief executive of Visit England also received an OBE. Stokes is probably best known in the North West for his time as the chief executive of Marketing Manchester.

But it was the emphasis on women in senior roles in strategically important business sectors that caught the eye.  Alison Ross said of her award: “I have been hugely fortunate to build a rewarding career in technology and my purpose is to open that opportunity to as many people from all backgrounds in Manchester as possible. Digital is an incredible opportunity for our city, we need to work together to unlock its promise as an engine of social mobility and prosperity. I am so proud and grateful to be recognised for doing my bit alongside my incredibly committed colleagues at Manchester Digital.”

Katie Gallagher, managing director of Manchester Digital, said: “We’re pleased that Alison’s incredibly hard work as the chair of Manchester Digital and all of her work at Auto Trader has been recognised with this honour.

“Alison has worked so hard to champion Greater Manchester’s tech sector, and particularly to encourage women and people from diverse backgrounds to consider a career in tech. She truly believes that there is a place in the tech industry for everyone and has worked with us at Manchester Digital to set up various initiatives and programmes for the communities across Greater Manchester to work within the tech industry.”

Nathan Coe, CEO at Auto Trader, said: “Alison has always had an admirable sense of responsibility to the communities in which she and Auto Trader operates. Alison has dedicated countless hours to ensure the region benefits from the growth of the technology industry, and that it is inclusive of women and under-represented communities.”

Alison has worked at Auto Trader for more than 20 years and has served as the chair of independent trade association Manchester Digital for five years, having been a board member since 2015.

She has inspired strategic initiatives that have made Auto Trader an Inclusive Top 50 Company in the UK, the first ever company in the world to achieve the ‘Autism Friendly’ accreditation by the National Autistic Society and a Disability Leader employer under the Government’s Disability Confident Scheme. The community and inclusion work she is leading has inspired the 1,000 strong Auto Trader workforce to partner with various charities and community groups across Greater Manchester and the UK to make a real difference.

Erika Rushton

Erika Rushton was awarded the honour for services to Civil Society and to Social Enterprise. She founded the pioneering company Kindred LCR CIC, which is a social enterprise delivering £6.5m in investment to local entrepreneurs with a social mission, to help transform their local areas.

To date it has supported more than 150 organisations in the Liverpool region.

Recognising the disadvantages faced by ethnic minority entrepreneurs, Kindred established the Black Social Traders network to promote the impact that BlaST-led businesses have on their local communities.

In 2020, she supported Islington Mill in Salford to secure £6.5m to build an artist-led community called The Other City.

It will accommodate many hundreds of micro enterprises, around 1,000 jobs and deliver £33m social impact per annum on completion.

In 2020, she led the creation of ‘One Day’ an alternative Industrial Strategy for Liverpool City Region written by 20 women in one day and launched on International Women’s Day 2020.

For 10 years she was an active board member for the CIC alongside her other ventures. Baltic Creative is one of Liverpool’s regeneration success stories, all of which was achieved under her leadership.

In 2009, the Baltic Triangle area was considered a red-light district, now, it is a thriving hub of business, and Baltic Creative itself is home to 180 creative and digital businesses, all of which are SMEs.

Zoe Holland

Zoe Holland, Chief Commercial Officer at leading North West law firm Fletchers Group, and a director of Frenkel Topping PLC, has been awarded MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to charity.

Recognising Zoe’s 30-year history with charities including her role as Vice-Chair of the SBA – the Solicitors’ Charity, Parent Ambassador for Young Minds as well as the charity she founded during the COVID-19 pandemic, Silk Elephant, the award is testament to a career-long commitment to use ‘law for good’.

She has used her professional platform to champion underrepresented groups, particularly the brain and spinal injured community. She was the eighth woman in the organisation’s 160-year history to be appointed as Vice-Chair of the SBA – the Solicitor’s Charity and was part of the core trustee team for the charity to use the Joseph Rowntree Minimum Income Standard, ensuring equality for beneficiaries.

In March 2020, Zoe set up registered charity, Silk Elephant, from her home in Sale, Manchester, delivering ‘simple acts of loving kindness’ to vulnerable people and bereaved families all over the world.

Handmade gifts and care packages have been sent to over 110,000 people across the UK as well as to the USA, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Recipients include familes of brain and spinal injured and terminally ill children as well as children and adults with severe autism. She also launched an international ‘kindness exchange’ with a charity in the US to support elderly people during the pandemic.

Richard Fraser, Frenkel Topping Group CEO, said: “Zoe is an extraordinary entrepreneur, a talented business and legal mind and a passionate advocate for using corporate influence
for good. This latest accolade is further validation of all of that. We are delighted that she has been recognised by the new King and share her pride in putting her important
charitable work on the national and international stage.

“Through the Frenkel Topping Charitable Foundation we see the great need in the personal injury and clinical negligence community for this kind of support and it is fantastic to see Zoe’s work recognised in this way.”

Jonathan Dutton, Chief Executive Officer, Rugby League World Cup was awarded an OBE for services to Rugby.