Member Article

North West entrepreneur wins national award

Matthew Sanders, CEO of the Brookfield Rose group, was last week added to the list of Great British Entrepreneur Award winners, joining Dragons Den investor James Caan and The Cambridge Satchel Company Chief Executive Julie Deane.

The awards, which were held on Wednesday night in association with NatWest, celebrated influential entrepreneurs from around the country, across a variety of categories. “The Great British Entrepreneur Awards are all about celebrating inspiring entrepreneurs”, comments Founder Simon Burton. “We believe that entrepreneurs forge innovation, disrupt tired markets, and foster positive change.”

The award for Social Enterprise Entrepreneur of the Year (UK) recognised Matthew’s ‘track record of extraordinary leadership in the battle against Britain’s social challenges’, and his dedication to ‘creating social change with strong examples of positive impact and success’.

Matthew, who has founded 9 successful businesses in just over 13 years, set up his first business, de Poel, at 26. To date, de Poel is a leading independent and vendor neutral expert in managing a temporary workforce. Based in Knutsford, Cheshire, the £600 million business employs almost 100 staff and recently featured on the North West Top 200 listing.

de Poel Community, originally launched in 2010 as ‘placeability’, serves as the CSR arm to de Poel. Originally founded under the ethos of helping employers to realise the benefits of a diverse workforce, de Poel Community helps people with barriers to work to find sustainable employment. Matthew and de Poel Community’s aligned passion for helping people with disabilities, as well as the unemployed, to get back into employment, was recognised by the judges for his category. Providing a vital link in the employment chain, de Poel Community has national partnerships set up with Welfare to Work providers and referral partners, to source candidates who are of working age and require help and support, to find and stay in work.

“I am extremely proud of the work the group does to target social challenges, and this award is dedicated to that hard work,” Matthew comments. “My aim for the future is to build on our success and diversify into new sectors, including education and volunteering. I am very excited about what the next twelve months has in store”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Matthew Sanders .