Our Founder speaks at ‘Women and Resilience’

Our founder, Katharine Hibbert, will be speaking at a ‘Women and Resilience’ event taking place on the 22nd November. She will be one of a number of inspiring women talking about their journeys in the business world, and ‘resilience’ within and outside of it.

The event is presented by Telegraph Women and The Women’s Chapter, sponsored by Investec and is in aid of the charity Smart Works. This British charity do great work providing high quality interview clothes, styling advice and interview training to women in need.

The evening, held at Ham Yard Hotel, will take in a range of themes and panelists. Here’s how The Women’s Chapter describe it:

The event will focus on the theme of Resilience and how women can develop it as a skill to better cope with setbacks in work and life.

Our discussion will explore how, given the right tools, each of us can develop our ability to adapt, recover and achieve success, despite adversity. 

In a conversation led by Telegraph Editor Claire Cohen, our phenomenal panel of speakers will share how they have built their ability to thrive and what they do to proactively deal with the challenges. 

Through this event, we will be raising awareness of the incredible work Smart Works do in getting women from disadvantaged backgrounds back into the workplace.

The event will also offer access to a secondary panel of inspiring entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who will be available for one-to-one chats and advice during the networking after the panel discussion. 

It promises to be a great evening in aid of a great cause. And tickets are still on offer!

Watch this space for a future blog piece about the event and a media profile of Katharine.

The 24Housing Awards – A Dot Dot Dot Review

Last week Dot Dot Dot went down to the 24Housing Awards in Coventry. We were nominated for innovation of the year. Here’s what happened!

Upon arriving, we were lucky enough to meet Chris Smith, the editor of 24Housing. Chris was a very charming chap who was swiftly whisked away from us by others keen to chat, so we continued to mingle. We really enjoyed seeing our clients and partners in more of an informal setting and to see them get the recognition they deserve.

Awards for Community Achievement in Housing

The 24Housing awards are to celebrate community achievements in housing. It was great to hear some amazing stories and meet some inspiring people from across the country. It was especially nice to talk to housing associations that had brought along tenants. These tenants had either won awards or been working with housing providers towards bigger things.

We were lucky enough to be sitting next to a nominee for ‘Best Green Scheme’. This was a woman who works for Newport City Homes but is also a tenant. They cheered every time Wales was mentioned! She helped the housing association to create a woodchip fuel system farmed from sustainable forest which provided energy to an estate. It was brilliantly innovative and it was nice to see tenants involved in a partnership like this. A good learning for all!

We were also sitting on a table with Wayne Campbell, nominated for housing professional of the year with Sixtown Housing. On boxing day he was having lunch with his family when he heard about flooding in the area. He went out and spent the rest of his Christmas holidays helping people struggling with floodwater. A lovely guy!

Our Award Nomination

Dot Dot Dot were up for innovation of the year for our approach to regeneration and empty buildings. Whilst we were sad not to win, we were delighted to see that Poplar HARCA were recognised for their drive of turning empty spaces into community assets. This was done through OpenPoplar.com. This is a site that allows local people to browse empty spaces and think of innovative ways to use them. It’s a great way to encourage entrepreneurs, small business space and community development generally.  So well done to them!

All in all it was a lovely occasion which afforded us the opportunity to hear many inspiring stories and meet an array of amazing people. We look forward to attending similar events in the future and building upon the relationships we created.