City’s top professional awards celebrate 15th year

Launch of prestigious challenge to city’s young businesspeople.

L-R Sam Pennell (BYPY Committee Chair) and Jodie Cook (current Birmingham Young Professional of the Year).Birmingham Young Professional of the Year launched this week, with an event celebrating 15 years of the prestigious awards and announcing the opening of the 2015 nominations.

Celebrating and rewarding young professional talent, BPS Birmingham Future’s flagship event was launched at Fleet Street Kitchen with over 200 guests, including previous winners and finalists championing the awards.

At the launch event, last year’s overall BYPY winner, Jodie Cook of JC Social Media advised applicants for BYPY 2015 to “pack out your application forms, think about what you can and will do for the city as a whole and go into the interview process with a smile, ready to give a great representation of yourself”. She also used the analogy of a snakes and ladders game to describe the ‘ladder’ that winning BYPY has given her, which can be applied to all winners and finalists of the award.

Nominations are now being sought to celebrate the work of young professionals who have made an exceptional contribution to the business professional and financial services sector in Greater Birmingham. The categories include finance, legal, property & construction, marketing & communications, technology and HR, recruitment & training sectors and candidates must be aged 35 or under.

This year’s BYPY Chair, Sam Pennell of espi PR and Events said: “This is an exciting time for BYPY and we’ve been overwhelmed by the support already shown for the event as we celebrate its milestone 15th year.

“Over the past 14 years we’ve seen some exceptional individuals come through this process and are immensely proud that our BYPY alumni includes some of the city’s very best professional talent. As many of our previous winners will testify, being part of BYPY is a huge opportunity for any ambitious young professionals and with so many working within the city we can’t wait to see the nominations start to flood in.”

BYPY finalists will go through a challenging judging process, where they will be interviewed by top business leaders, ahead of the glittering awards ceremony at the ICC on Thursday 14th May 2015.

Tickets are on sale, priced at £90 for BPS Birmingham members and £110 for standard tickets.

Following the success of this year’s awards, BYPY has welcomed back a number of its high profile sponsors including SimkissGuy Recruitment, Connect Group, Gateley, Forresters and 2015 headline sponsors Chiltern Railways Mainline. It also welcomes on-board Squire Patton Boggs and CBRE as new sponsors for the 2015 event.

For further information or to book tickets please visit www.birminghamfuture.co.uk/bypy

Pic: Sam Pennell (L) and Jodie Cook.