2025 Finalists

Rebecca Headden is a force of nature. Consistently showing up for the community and offering her voice to bring together people in networks. This is why I am nominating her for the Star Award.

Rebecca Headdan is one of those rare people who lights up a room before she even speaks. Not because she demands attention, but because she radiates authenticity, warmth, and purpose. As the founder of R13 Recruitment, she has redefined what it means to lead in business, showing us all that success and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Oa Hackett is a remarkable force of hope and resilience. Diagnosed with breast cancer at 28, she faced chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, yet her story didn’t end there. During treatment, she received care packages filled with everyday comforts and emotional warmth that inspired something extraordinary. From those moments, Little Lifts was born: a charity that delivers beautifully curated boxes to people undergoing breast cancer treatment, ensuring no one faces it alone.

Her tireless work earned her the prestigious British Citizen Award Medal of Honour for Services to Healthcare, presented at the Palace of Westminster in July 2024. Oa transformed her own hardship into an act of kindness that now touches thousands. Her courage, creativity and compassion shine brightly. She truly is a star.

Sam is a true changemaker not through noise or novelty, but through purposeful, consistent action that elevates digital literacy across colleagues, clients, and communities. Her impact is felt everywhere: in how we learn, how we work, and how we shape a digital future that is more inclusive, intelligent, and human-centred.

Digital literacy is a vast, complex field, spanning tools, platforms, behaviours, and mindsets. Sam brings clarity to this complexity. Whether it’s helping a client reimagine their audience’s digital experience, training colleagues on the latest AI integrations, or leading frameworks that define how we engage with creators and emerging tech. Sam is the person everyone turns to when they want to understand, not just adopt, digital change.

Lyndsay has been dynamite in raising the profile of Buy Local Norfolk online. She has created and posted numerous videos of the members, making them feel the real benefit of belonging to our networking group. She is super professional, working very efficiently, and not afraid of giving advice on what you are saying in the videos and HOW you are saying it too! Above all, she is amazingly fun to work with and has encouraged those who are less inclined to do videos, to be captured behind them, ultimately helping their confidence as well as their business. I think the impact she has personally made to the growth of Buy Local Norfolk, and in turn, the growth to members businesses, fully deserves recognition.

Since September 2022, Charlotte has managed to build an engaged, enthusiastic and collaborative collective of food and drink businesses. First as part of the EU funded Food Innovation Cluster initiatives, helping to launch the yearly Nourish conference, attended by over 150 people, including exclusive talks from national brands like Proper Corn and Gu/Coconut Collaborative. Charlotte helped build the community, using old school tools on outlook to get our first newsletters going, reaching 550 signed up businesses at the end of the project.

Cat Stallard is a Paid Marketing Specialist at Pivotal and has had a truly impressive year. She’s worked with 24 clients, 13 of which were brand new to Pivotal, helping them hit the ground running with smart, results-focused campaigns. Cat is calm, curious, and incredibly dedicated. She’s constantly learning and evolving her approach to make sure our clients get the best possible outcomes. She’s also a brilliant team player, supportive, solutions-focused, and always willing to roll up her sleeves. Cat’s impact this year has been huge, both for our clients and for the wider team. She absolutely deserves the recognition this award brings.

Let’s face it, most people want to be marketers for reasons other than data analysis. But we work in an industry that threatens to drown in data, perhaps even worse, an industry that often doesn’t know what to do with data – so simply ignores it! The inconvenient truth is that marketing needs maths.

Enter Martha.

We all know that good data leads to valuable insights that guide future decision making and real-time campaign improvements. Martha is our marketing keystone. She gets us that all-important insight, with an enquiring and meticulous mind that effortlessly sorts (in a higher education vertical) enquirers from enquiries, applications from applicants, Open Day registrants from Open Day attendees.

Konstantina’s confidence, positivity and perseverance make her an integral part of the Norwich BID team. Her strong work ethic and dedication has seen Work in Norwich (WiN) continuously grow over the past 7 months. (Konstantina’s previous job as a Marketing Officer saw her commuting from Norwich to Edinburgh- if that’s not commitment, I don’t know what is!)

As the BID’s Marketing Executive dedicated solely to WiN, she has taken the responsibility in her stride, tackling any challenges head-on and being proactive in promoting the WiN brand. Being from Lesvos, Konstantina has a better understanding of coming to live and work in Norwich than most- her personal experiences clearly inform her work, with an authentic tone of voice and palpable passion for what Norwich has to offer.

The team at The Magdalene Group collectively work together with a vision to end Violence against women and girls. Collectively we work together with women and girls in our communities that have been affected by sexual violence, coercion, grooming, trafiking and exploitation. Delivery through our Projects: Doorway Women’s service – providing trauma and gendered support to adult women. Rose project which provides support to children and young people who have been victims of sexual exploitation and Jigsaw programme which goes into schools and works with professionals to help better understanding and break the cycle of this sexual abuse.

We are recognised as being effective in working with some of the most hidden women and girls who experience additional challenges of isolation, poor physical or mental health, substance use, missing episodes, homelessness and living in care.

The teams are truly person centred adopting individual support tailored to each unique women and young person they encounter with an overall aim of helping them to recover and lead fulfilling lives.

Being tenacious in our advocacy and empowering women and young people to be heard and understood and not blamed or misunderstood. The teams are truly person centred adopting individual support tailored to each unique women and young person they encounter with an overall aim of helping them to recover and lead fulfilling lives.

Home-Start Norfolk shows the spirit of ‘The Ally’ award through it’s commitment to empowering families and fostering inclusive communities across Norfolk. Their mission to support parents of young children during challenging times is shown through a dedicated network of trained volunteers who provide compassionate, non-judgmental assistance tailored to each family’s unique needs .

By championing early intervention and fostering resilience among parents, Home-Start Norfolk not only transforms individual lives but also strengthens the broader community. Their inclusive, empathetic, and proactive efforts make them a deserving recipient of ‘The Ally’ award, recognising their role in creating a more supportive and empowered Norfolk.

Home-Start Norfolk operates with a small staff team and a group of over 100 volunteers spread across Norfolk. Each of these volunteers undergo training to offer bespoke support to each family in an individualised way, listening and paying attention to each unique circumstance. It was impossible to name every member of the team, however Home-Start Norfolk is only able to be an ally to families across Norfolk because of the dedication of the team of volunteers.

Gemma Hyde, from Castle Quarter Norwich, is an exemplary candidate for the ‘Role Model’ award due to her unwavering dedication, inspirational leadership, and positive influence within the marketing community.

Inspirational Leadership: Gemma consistently demonstrates exceptional leadership qualities. She leads by example, fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment where team members feel valued and motivated. Her ability to guide and mentor others has significantly contributed to the professional growth of her colleagues.

Positive Influence: Gemma’s positive attitude and unwavering commitment to excellence inspire those around her. She is known for her ability to uplift her team during challenging times, always finding ways to encourage and support her peers. Her enthusiasm and passion for marketing are contagious, making her a beacon of positivity within Castle Quarter, Norwich.

Liz is a passionate, positive marketer with a natural flair for both the art and the science of marketing. An inspiring go-getter and leader in my team, she leads by example in terms of her knowledge (she is a natural subject matter expert for all things data and digital), with an attitude of getting the job done and thinking outside of the box for new ideas. I learn from her every day and it’s been wonderful seeing her new-look team connect, grow and flourish, with all playing such vital roles in that synergy. Liz’s management has been key to unlocking this.

Liz is calm under pressure, not afraid to challenge back where needed and is at ease engaging multiple stakeholders, at various levels of seniority. Liz is a ferociously good planner and champions the customer at every stage, creating clear, SMART and engaging timelines, plans, training and communications. This inspires, instils confidence and helps bring people along with her on the changes we are making and implementing as a team.

Over the last couple of years, Chief Executive Zoe has led the Dialogue team through unprecedented change.

Until March 2022, Dialogue agency was nestled in the back room of a local newspaper and media group; a place it had uncomfortably sat for over 20 years, often referred to as ‘the naughty children’ of the larger company. So, in 2022, when the company’s private equity owners sold the main business, but chose to keep Dialogue as a separate entity, Zoe saw an exciting opportunity ahead.

Zoe described our ‘extraction’ from this legacy business as “changing the wings while the plane was still in the air” and, once the deal was complete, memorably announced the news via Teams to the agency while at Center Parcs for her daughter’s birthday! Transitioning the team through this change was a priority for Zoe and she achieved it while supporting us to deliver year-on-year growth.

Emily Smith, or Em and Smiffy as she is know by all of us, is an exceptional representation of everything that ‘The Leader’ stands for. Over eight years in the company, she has worked her way up from an apprentice to a Director, taking on many different leadership roles along the way. Her recent promotion to Director is the pinnacle demonstration of her inspirational contributions to the business, her ability to coordinate team growth, and her ability to inspire and uplift her team around her.

Emily is always the first person to greet you with a smily “good morning” at the start of the day and will always stay late if her team needs extra support. However, there are three main things that makes Emily truly stand out as a leader:

1. Genuine care for her team and emotional intelligence

2. Knowledge about and love for the industry

3. Proven results for business growth

At UnitedUs, we rarely work with freelancers. But for Clare, we make the exception – because she is the exception. Quite simply, she has transformed our agency’s capabilities, strengthened our client relationships, and elevated our creative output beyond what we thought possible.

Five years ago, global brand Aon, one of the world’s largest professional services firms, approached us with an opportunity to lead a series of thought-leadership campaigns. Internally, we didn’t have the capacity. But we knew exactly who could rise to the challenge. We called Clare, and she didn’t just deliver, she redefined what was possible.

At the time, Aon’s brand was undergoing a global transformation, with no fixed guidelines, tone or structure. Clare stepped in with empathy, skill, and an exceptional ability to write on behalf of others. Over the course of a year, she interviewed senior leaders and ghost-wrote high-profile content for global CEOs and specialists, work that gained increasing traction and respect across the business. She quickly became the go-to writer for Aon worldwide.

Ebony-Storm truly embodies what it means to be a freelancer. She began her foray into freelancing whilst on a trip to Valencia for digital nomads. This is where Ebony discovered her thirst for the freedom and flexibility freelancing could gift her. Ebony knows what it means to be both a digital nomad travelling around and enjoying the benefits of working whilst on the move, as well as being a freelancer with her feet firmly planted in her home town of Norwich. She is nothing but dedicated to being a freelancer and what it truly means to be an independent. 

Over the years I’ve known Ebony, I am never not astounded by her absolute generosity when it comes to supporting other freelancers and creatives. She has such an open mind and kind heart and is always willing to give advice, share ideas and cheer others along. She is also an incredible supporter of the next generation of freelance talent and I have seen first-hand how she feels such responsibility to pass the baton to those coming up behind her. This was shown to me recently when we were working on a project together for a tech client who had an aspiring copywriter in their team. Ebony didn’t hesitate to invite her into the process, share her workings and knowledge and include her along every step of the way. Ebony truly does lead from the front and I am in constant admiration of her willingness to help and support others.

Mobilityways is a tech-led social enterprise, on a mission to make Zero Carbon Commuting a reality.
Led by our amazing teams in Product, New Business, Client Success, Community, Operations, Finance and Senior Leadership, we build ground-breaking climate tech, empowering large employers to measure, reduce and report their scope 3 commuter emissions.

For years the team have worked tirelessly for our mission, story telling and becoming experts in the field to try and get organisations to stand up and take ownership for their impact on the climate and how their employee commuting emissions need to be reduced in order to achieve net zero.
I would love for the team to get the recognition that they deserve from winning this award. Our CLUB values (Customer-Obsessed, Learning Fanatic, United and Bar Raiser) support our vision and purpose and our brilliant team champion them at every opportunity, truly embodying what they mean and what they stand for.

Indigo Swan is empowering women of all ages to create a career for themselves, by learning, growing and having the opportunity to be the best versions of themselves on a daily basis. We have a 70% female workforce and our ownership is 50% female with our Leadership Team and Snr members of the team having a 70% female presence as well. We place wellbeing, career growth, female presence in a vast male sector, neurodiversity at the top of the agenda and our value of Embrace Individuality allows us to work with the team to fulfil their true potential, whilst embracing the person they are. Aimee our Commercial Director is an Investors in People Leader of the Year (2023), Hayley our FD is The Rising Star Award Winner 2024 (Great British Businesswomen Awards) and our two Heads of Leanne and Hannah have built a career at Indigo Swan over the last 15 and 10 years respectfully having never had leadership roles before. Aimee is a mentor for the Women in Utilities Network (WUN) and our Swan of the Year award was won by Lizzie who works as our Case Manager Mentor and is part of the snr team at Indigo Swan. We help our team by working with them on a 1-3-5 that allows them all to focus on a big vision each year and 5 professional goals, 5 professional development goals and 5 personal goals that as a business we look to help them achieve. 

A brilliant creative makes connections. They join the dots between seemingly disparate ideas, they facilitate connections between other creatives, and they help brands build meaningful relationships with their audiences. 

Maddy has mastered the art of connection, and embodies the generosity, empathy, and excellence of a true creative. Working alongside each other on various projects, I’ve seen Maddy deliver brand identities that have real, measurable commercial value – landing clients new work and business opportunities. 

Maddy has incredible versatility, delivering and maintaining distinctive brands for clients across many industries including wellbeing, tech, and financial services, FMCG, education and more. Her clients typically work with her for years, engaging her across a broad range of brand projects. I have no doubt that this is because of her consistent high quality, and thoughtful and intentional nature. 

Brittany is a creative through and through, responding to campaign and content briefs with out of the box trend focused ideas that she executes masterfully in her photography. Brittany is not just our in-house photographer, but an advocate for the Jarrolds brand, being a huge creative force in campaign conception and development- she understands exactly where we want to take the business and how we can do it through our powerful visual campaigns. Her photography has elevated our brand visuals putting us up their with the likes of Harrods and Liberty, while being uniquely Jarrolds.