Equalities Minister shines the light on talented females

8 years ago

Nominations are now open for the second annual WeAreTheCity Rising Star Awards.

01 Feb 2016: Today, nominations open for the Rising Star Awards 2016, the first to focus on the UK’s female talent pipeline below management level. The awards will celebrate 100 individual female contributors that represent the leaders and role models of tomorrow. Founded in 2015, the awards will shine the light on female talent across the country.

The awards are supported by Minister for Equalities, Nicky Morgan, who commented: “These awards are an incredible celebration of the great achievements women are making in business. We have more women on FTSE boards than ever before, the lowest gender pay gap on record and we’ve been rated the best place in Europe for women to start a business. I am proud of how far we’ve come but we must now build on that momentum so we achieve true gender equality.”

Founder and CEO Vanessa Valley hopes the awards will encourage organisations to consider how they strengthen the development of their female pipeline in the future. She said: "The focus on increasing the number of women on boards in the UK over the past few years has been extremely successful. We now need to focus on helping to highlight women who will be future managers and directors within our organisations.”

This year the awards will also welcome a number of categories, which include Rising Star Cham-pions and a Defence Category. The Rising Star Champions category will recognise both male and female senior leaders who actively support the female talent pipeline, and the Defence category is the first of it’s kind, celebrating the pipeline of future leaders in Defence.

This is also a record year for the awards recognising 100 women from across the UK and Ireland - an increase of 50 from last year’s ceremony.

WeAreTheCity is also pleased to announce a wide range of sponsors from a number of sectors, including AON, Barclays, Bloomberg, Cancer Research UK (Women of Influence), Executive and Personal Assistants Association (EPAA), EY, Kier, Lloyd’s, ISS, Morgan Stanley, Newton Investment Management, Oliver Wyman, PA Consulting, Pedalsure, PwC, Reed Smith, Societe Generale, So-citm, Twenty Recruitment, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Virgin Media Busi-ness and Worldpay.

Nominations will take place online at RisingStars.WeAreTheCity.com. A shortlist of 10 women from each industry category chosen by an esteemed panel of judges will be published towards the end of April. The shortlist will then be open to a public vote.

The Top 100 Rising Stars will be announced in June and all winners, sponsors and supporters will be invited to attend a prestigious evening reception at Barclays in London to celebrate and collect their awards.

-ENDS-

The Rising star awards are also supported by the following media partners, The Voice, Guardian Women in Leadership, Square Mile, Computer Weekly and Inclusive Networks.

Criteria for entries

• Open to all women regardless of age

• Nominees must be below management

• Nominees must be working within the industry of the category they are nominated for

• Individuals can nominate themselves

How we define a Rising Star

• Someone who is a champion of women in their business or sector

• Someone who strives to achieve success and results

• Someone who gives back or inspires others

• Someone who is recognised by others as having the potential to become a future leader in their industry

The Process

• Nominations open for all categories – 01 February

• Nominations close for all categories – 18 March

• Top 10 Shortlist from each category announced/public voting opens for all shortlisted nom-inees – 25 April

• Shortlist celebration event – 17 May

• Public voting closes for all shortlisted nominees – 27 May

• Top 5 Rising Stars for each category announced – 06 June

Top 100 Rising Stars drinks reception and awards for winners, guests and sponsors at Bar-clays – 30 June

For further information please visit, http://risingstars.wearethecity.com/

Or email risingstars@wearethecity.com

Attached Media

About WeAreTheCity.com

About WeAreTheCity The aim of WeAreTheCity is to provide an information careers and lifestyle portal for women working in London and across the UK. It was founded in 2008 by husband and wife team, Stewart & Vanessa Vallely with the intention of providing career orientated content to working women and entrepreneurs across London. Other key facts • It has been funded by both founders and was run as a not for profit from 2008 to 2013. • WeAreTheCity has a database of over 30,000 professional and entrepreneurial women. • The company has a projected reach (via network relationships) of approx. 400,000 women across the UK. • WeAreTheCity experiences over 4million hits per month, 210,000 unique visitors • WeAreTheCity.com is the top 1% of visited websites in the UK (as per Alexa.com), ranking at 7,275 out of 10 million websites registered in the UK, 181,977 out of 1 billion websites worldwide. • WeAreTheCity has a job board offering specifically aimed at our female members, www.careerscity.co.uk which was launched in October 2012. • WeAreTheCity.com has a sister site based in India which was just launched in March 2013, www.WeAreTheCity.in. This is currently sponsored by Ernst & Young LLP • We have a combined social media reach of 9,000 via Twitter, 1,500 on Facebook and 5,000 members on LinkedIN. • WeAreTheCity has over 25 resident bloggers and over 250 volunteer writers. • We generate around 25-30 unique pieces of content per week. • We supports over 25 charities with free advertising through our Giving Back section. WeAreTheCity provides the following services. • Provides career and lifestyle orientated information to professional and entrepreneurial women working in London and across the UK. • Provides corporates with a platform (through Careerscity.co.uk) to advertise their open vacancies directly to a female market). • Project manages events for corporates who wish to engage with particular demographic of women (eg Technology). • Provides a platform for corporate companies to enhance their brand within the female community by publishing gender related content. • Provides a platform for female entrepreneurs to advertise and promote their quality products or services to a large female demographic. • Offers training opportunities to our members via free webinars. • Profiles inspirational women across the UK in order to raise their profile and inspire our members. • Promotes restaurants, bars, business schools, wellness activities in London plus other female centric services. • Provides competitions and unique discounts for our members. • Provides our own events, eg networking drinks 4 times per year. • Engages with our members via a bi-weekly newsletter and various social media feeds. • Promotes female leadership programmes and opportunities for women to up-skill outside their corporate environments. • Provides a calendar of events from female networks and other learning providers. • Provides a directory of recommended coaches. • Promotes giving back activities (Charities and social enterprises) to our membership to encourage them to give back to their communities. • Provides a platform for female writers to share their stories and experiences with other women.