Business Secretary Sajid Javid applauded QAEP 2015 Winners on Tuesday 14th July 2015 at BIS. During a private ceremony at the Department of Business, Skills and Innovation in London, he presented The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion (QAEP) winners with a engraved glass chalice and a scroll signed by The Queen. The Award for Enterprise Promotion is given to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to promoting and enhancing enterprise among UK entrepreneurs and companies. Among the six recipients of the QAEP 2015 was Lopa Patel MBE, who became the first Asian woman to receive the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion.
Lopa’s award comes after a considerable career spent dedicated to the promotion of skills and enterprise throughout the UK and has enabled her to build a reputation as an inspirational figure in her field. She has promoted entrepreneurship, mentored new ventures and directed the activities of business networks and support programs.
“It is a huge honour to receive the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion,” said Lopa Patel, “encouraging diversity and entrepreneurship in the world of business is something about which I am extremely passionate. It is my hope that this accolade will provide me with a platform to continue advocating diversity in business, as well as greater innovation of technological skills in industry”.
As the first female Asian recipient of the award, today marks a key moment for the recognition of Asian women as entrepreneurs. Asian women have long had a strong presence in the running and creation of SMEs, but received little wider recognition for their contribution to entrepreneurship in the UK. The award comes after a long career spent as a passionate advocate for diversity and entrepreneurship in business and the creative industries, for which Lopa received an MBE in 2009.
Lopa Patel also founded the equality and diversity think tank, Diversity UK, an organisation of which she currently sits as CEO. She is also a non-Executive Director of EMBG (Ethnic Minority Business Group) and a Trustee of educational charity Raha International. She is a Technology Ambassador for STEMNET, helping to encourage girls to take up science careers, a sector in which just 13% of the workforce are women (‘Women in scientific careers’ Parliamentary Report, 2014).
She is also the first Asian woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is also a Fellow of the RSA, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Other winners of the QAEP 2015 included Chris Pichon, Chairman of The Wenta Business Centre, who was recognised with the QAEP Lifetime Achievement Award; Margaret Gibson of Women’s Enterprise Scotland; Business Investor Nelson Gray; Richard Holt of the Creative Innovation Centre CIC and Andrew Penaluna, Director of the International Institute of Creative Entrepreneurship at the University of Wales Trinity St David.
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