Women from Milton Keynes at the forefront of social innovation.

MK Women Leaders Awards 2017 ceremony took place on Friday 13th October at Doubletree by Hilton, MK Stadium. Padma Cheriyan, Ros McFadden and Franzi Florack have all been nominated for the awards. We have been very lucky to work with them through our Citizen Innovation programme as part of the MK:Smart project and the Our MK crowdsourcing website.

Padma Cheriyan won an outstanding contribution award for her active role and campaigns to improve lives of the visually impaired people in and around Milton Keynes.

Franzi Florack has received a female entrepreneur award, being recognised for the fantastic work that she has been doing in promoting the local and independent food scene in Milton Keynes through MK Food Revolution and the social enterprise businesses that she has started, MK Biergarten and Stony Beer Bear.

And finally, Ros McFadden, a founder of the Breastfeeding Hub MK and the breastfeeding app MK has received nominations in three categories: public services, community impact – voluntary and science and technology. Although Ros didn’t win an award this year, we are incredibly proud about her nominations at this early stage for the Breastfeeding Hub MK.

We’re also thrilled for Kathy Howard at YMCA MK for winning in the community impact – charity category!

We would like to congratulate all of the finalists and winners of this year’s awards, a full list of which can be found here. In particular we’d like to congratulate Padma, Ros and Franzi for their amazing contribution to the citizen-led voluntary, social and technology action in Milton Keynes!