The 12th Women in Business Awards will take place on Thursday 7 March 2024 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast. Queen’s Business School is sponsoring the ‘Advancing Diversity in the Workplace’ Award. 

Women in Business is the leading business network for women in the workplace across Northern Ireland. The awards aim to acknowledge, reward and applaud the outstanding achievements of female business leaders from all sectors and industries across Northern Ireland.  

The ‘Advancing Diversity in the Workplace’ award recognises a business and/or woman who has championed diversity within the workplace and can demonstrate the benefits of this.  

In 2023, QBS presented this award to two winners, one business and one individual.  Sarah Balmforth, Director at Hughes Insurance, won the individual award for her efforts of empowering her team to feel valued and heard whilst the company was on their DEI journey.  

The business award was presented to Fibrus, a UK telecommunications provider. Despite being an emerging company in a competitive field, diversity, equality and inclusion have been at the core of the Fibrus business ethos from the start.  

Diversity in the workplace and gender equality and are of key importance to Queen’s Business School. In recognition of our own solid foundation for striving to eliminate gender bias and developing an inclusive culture that values all staff we proudly hold a Bronze Athena SWAN Charter Mark. 

Professor Shuang Ren, Director of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging at Queen’s Business School, says: 

‘We continue to sponsor this award to show our support for strong and passionate people leading the charge in their respective organisations and industries to push the importance of diversity to the forefront.  As a leading higher education and research provider in Northern Ireland, we know that businesses benefit and people in the workforce thrive when there is a diverse range of people and voices bringing different points of view to the organisation. ’ 

We look forward to attending the Awards and celebrating women in business across Northern Ireland.  

To find out more about the Women in Business Awards NI and the other categories, read here. 

 

Further reading 

• Talk to QBS about sponsorship 
• Read more about our gender equality initiatives at Queen’s Business School