Since 2008, WeAreTheCity has helped thousands of women enhance their careers through dedicated events, conferences, networking groups and its own resource platform  WeAreTheCity.com.

Now in its tenth year WATC is more committed than ever to highlighting the achievements of the female talent pipeline across the UK.

The Rising Star Awards were the first awards to focus on the UK’s female talent pipeline below management level and to support its winners (post awards) with ongoing career support and learning opportunities.

When the awards were launched at the House of Parliament in 2015, WeAreTheCity set a strategic objective to highlight the achievements and support the careers of 500 cross industry women by 2020. This target will be achieved by the end of 2018.  Given the success of our previous winner’s and the need to continue to highlight the pipeline of future female leaders across the UK, we have now expanded our mission to highlight the achievements of 1000 women by 2023.

Over the past three years, with the support of over 60 leading FTSE organisations and 120 judges, WeAreTheCity has been able to celebrate the achievements of over 400 women (300 in the UK and 100 in India) through our various awards. In 2016, we also introduced a Rising Star Champions category to showcase industry role models and in 2017, we included our Company of the Year award to recognise companies who were actively supporting their female talent pipeline. We added to our awards set, by introducing TechWomen50 to focus on the tech pipeline in 2017.

By highlighting the accolades of these women, WeAreTheCity is not only demonstrating the sheer amount of female talent that exists across the UK, but it is also actively encouraging organisations and business leaders to adopt best practice and invest in these women as leaders of tomorrow.

Our awards are different:

 

• They are the only awards to focus solely on the pipeline of female talent, e.g. women below senior management
• There are no age limitations for our awards. We believe age shouldn’t be a barrier and that you can be a rising star at any age!
• We cover multiple industries and professions, focusing on those where attracting and retaining women is an issue
• We are the only awards body to celebrate our shortlist by featuring them on our website and by holding a celebratory event in their honour
• We also support our shortlist with learning opportunities through our series of tweet chats which broadens their network.
• We are the only awards body to feature 100 women as winners in the same awards ceremony
• We provide ongoing support to our winners after the awards through WeAreTheCity’s Careers Club, our online e-learning platform
• We continue to provide PR opportunities for our winners through panels and speaking opportunities

You can find out more about Rising Stars, our criteria, our timeline and this year’s sponsors via this website.

Hear about the awards founder from its founder, Vanessa Vallely, WeAreTheCity