On the evening of November 12th, Surrey Chambers of Commerce held a virtual event, where we gathered to recognise some Magnificent Women of Lockdown. We were delighted to be joined by HRH The Countess of Wessex, who has an ongoing interest in support-ing women in business as founder and chair of the Women’s Network Forum (WNF). HRH had already supported our national network of chambers by writing a letter of congratulations to all those businesses receiving a UK Business Hero award. 

Over the last 8 months life has been very different for everyone and we have missed meeting up and sharing the wonderful stories that many of our Business Women in Surrey members have regaled us with before.

Surrey Chambers of Commerce worked in conjunction with Mandira’s Kitchen and Silent Pool Distillers to share some collaborative stories from lockdown and recognise some Magnificent Women!

Our line-up of speakers shared the highs and lows of their journeys.

Hannah Essex, Co-Director of Commun-ications at the British Chambers of Commerce shared how the British Chambers, along with the Chamber Network, sprung into action to get the best possible support for businesses across the country. As someone who has a job-share at director level, Hannah highlighted how the pandemic impacted her situation.

Mandira Moitra Sarkar with Sophie Best, Founder of Mandira’s kitchen and Head of Finance and Commercial at Silent Pool, shared their experiences of lockdown citing collaboration as the key ingredient for getting through the crisis. They managed to bring people together very quickly to tackle the situation and demonstrated this in their conversation.

Sally Pritchett, Co-Founder and Manag-ing Director of Something Big showed that even when you are fighting for the life of your business, there is still room to reach out and help others. Her insights will have helped many others in their businesses and her delivery was, as ever, down to earth and candid.

We thank all those who attended, and to HRH The Countess of Wessex for taking time out of her evening to be present at our event.