Women Ahead founder Liz Dimmock has been named joint ‘External Coaching and Mentoring Person of the Year’ at the national Coaching at Work awards.
She was awarded the honour alongside Erik de Haan of Ashridge at Coaching at Work’s annual conference held in London on Wednesday 6 July.
Women Ahead is an award winning, world-class mentoring and change consultancy that drives equality to improve standards in business and sport. The social enterprise creates mentoring partnerships between and within the worlds of business and sport, including business leaders mentoring athletes, a first-of-its-kind programme.
The judging panel praised Liz saying:
“Liz’s work has been consistently powerful and effective. She puts huge energy into her passions and fights key battles with tenacity and humour.”
They added: “Her work is holistic with heart and soul,” and praised the "sheer impact" Liz has made, her "determination, and practical demonstration of thought-leading ideas."
Liz said: “It’s hugely rewarding to receive this award and for Women Ahead’s pioneering, collaborative work to be recognised by such a highly regarded team at Coaching at Work. I passionately believe in the power of high quality mentoring to create positive change in individuals, organisations and society! At Women Ahead we believe that parity between men and women in the worlds of sport and business will benefit individuals, organisations and society as a whole, and we’re working towards this in everything we do. It’s fantastic to be able to make a difference.”
Liz has held commercial, coaching and leadership roles at IMG, KPMG, HSBC (where she was global head of coaching), and GP Strategies (Managing Partner). In 2012 she cycled the entire route of the Tour de France, one week ahead of the men's race, matching them stage for stage, riding 3,479kms in 21 days. This journey highlighted the inequalities in the sport she loves; the fact that there is no women's Tour de France (despite the clear physiological ability of women to complete it) was a driving factor in the creation of Women Ahead.
The Coaching at Work judging panel added that Liz won the award because of the "outstanding work she has done in the field of coaching and mentoring women" and because of the range of roles she has had across businesses.
