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.

 The project has shown the need for such competitions, as the finalists for #IAmEnterprising had fantastic business ideas, passion for their work, and the drive to continue working towards their goals. And as it said on their certificates; ‘Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy’ – it won’t be an easy ride for these students, but we are positive they will all reach their goals in the end!