Celebrating BD superstars at the ALF sales & marketing awards

Great strides are being made within the industry regarding enhanced parental leave policies, including upweighted financial packages, but there are still challenges around encouraging and helping women return to the workplace.

Hannah March, chief growth officer at Fold7, when picking up the award on Lizzie’s behalf, said: “What Lizzie has achieved and the recognition of her work is important because of what it stands for. Do not underestimate care givers. Back women. Back mothers. Back mothers returning to work.

“As an industry we are still losing female talent at a phenomenal rate because we fail to support women when they become mothers. Change needs to be both cultural and institutional. So, it’s about a top-down culture of trust and flexibility with the right systems, processes and policies to enable teams in the right way."

Lizzie has added her thanks to Fold7 for “fully supporting my return to work as a new mum.”

Women are worried that even a brief time out the workplace means they lose touch with the industry and their skills become rusty. The All In Census 2023 showed 55% of women who had taken parental leave in the last five years believe that choosing to do so damaged their careers.

Ali Wallace, CEO of DNA Recruit - a long-standing sponsor of The BD100 Business Developer of the Year award - emphasizes the crucial role of agency management in supporting their business development team: “Real new business talent is very difficult to find. When you are lucky enough to find the right person, it’s critical that you back them by providing a supportive environment that will enable them to flourish.”

New Business is a particularly fast-moving and traditionally pressurized environment but agencies need to be flexible enough to take account and accommodate the needs of parents, so that it remains an attractive role within agencies. Fingers crossed next year we’ll see more returning mums among the BD100 cohort.

The judges for the ALF Sales & Marketing Awards were unanimous in their decision that Lizzie was the standout candidate. They went on to comment that she had managed to demonstrate extraordinary talent and capabilities in the most testing of environments. TMW’s Steve Garside was also Highly Commended for his exceptional new business efforts over the last year.

There were plenty more honours presented during the evening. The BD100 Rising Star trophy was presented to Daniel Marriott in his role as senior growth and development manager at Wasserman. The judges said that Daniel had demonstrated a great balance of business impact along with the softer skills of culture and team building and the art of storytelling.

Croud scooped New Business Team of the Year and the New Business Win of the Year, sponsored by Propeller, was netted by Sushi Agency for landing the Terry’s Chocolate Orange account.