Everest trekker Anne Ganley has crowned a week of achievement by being bestowed the title of Entrepreneur of the Year by business colleagues.Anne, who returned from a 14 day trek to Everest base camp on Monday, received the prestigious award at the Entrepreneurs’ Forum gala dinner following its annual business conference.
Surrounded by more than 300 of the region’s top entrepreneurs and their guests, Anne said: “Not many people say I’m a woman of few words but I really appreciate this, thank you.”
Mark Hatton, senior partner of Ernst & Young, presented the award describing her as a woman “with a heart of gold and a nuclear reactor as an energy source she has exceptional levels of energy, passion, determination and drive. Her will to win is bewildering. She is a real survivor in an incredibly tough and tight market. She has really stood out in the last year,” he added.
Anne has run the business started by her father all her adult life and, since 2008, has owned Sunderland-based Thompson Building Centres and TAPS plumbers merchants outright.
She is a past regional chairman of the Builders Merchants Federation, representing the north at national level, and has been recognised personally with a string of awards including the prestigious Susan Dobson Award for Entrepreneurship.
She was one of a group of entrepreneurs who trekked to Everest base camp in a personal challenge set by the Entrepreneurs’ Forum.
The Forum’s annual awards recognise the cream of the region’s business talent.
The Emerging Talent award went to Chris Peacock, Group Managing Director of his family’s business Peacock Medical Group.
Mark said: “He has breathed new life into the business and brought new energy, ideas, passion and a real spirit of adventure.”
Chris said: “I have been in the Forum for seven years and it has always inspired me. As someone in a fourth generation family business I needed outside help to deliver real change. To all the people who have helped me and given advice I thank you.”
The Lifetime Achievement award was this year presented to a “true Geordie patriot”, Bob Thompson, of Pyeroy.
Mark said: “He has been in business almost 40 years and his business is recognised as the best in its class, doing fantastic work across the UK. Bob is highly astute, fiercely loyal, fantastic company and is Magpies mad.”
Bob said he was “humbly embarrassed” and that his success was down to the people who have worked for him over the years.
This year the awards were designed and made by students.
Donna Hindson and Stacy Burke of Newcastle College made the Entrepreneur of the Year award, with initial research done by Katya Andrushkova.
Donna, who is studying interior architecture, explained: “The design has a number of twists and turns with a solid and grounding base, which symbolize varied aspects of business world. A piece of oak provided a solid foundation then we built it up with cubes made from different materials like brass, marble, walnut and aluminium to show the different aspects of running a business.”
Raymond Dance, also of Newcastle College, created a ceramic sculpture for the Emerging Talent award based on the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
The Lifetime Achievement award – a terracotta brick carved and then fired to extreme temperatures to become something with its own identity while retaining its fundamental strength in form and structure, with the word integrity running through it – was made by Rob Winter, at the University of Sunderland
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