Dec 10, 2008 : Memset Founder Wins Two Awards

📅 December 10, 2008 - UK-based web hosting provider Memset (memset.com 👉 Total Reviews: 4
🙌 Average Rating: 3.8 / 10
👍 Good Reviews: 1
👎 Bad Reviews: 3
👈 Official Responses: 0) announced on Wednesday that its co-founder and managing director, Kate Craig-Wood, has won the Demeter award at the 2008 NatWest Everywoman National Awards (everywoman.com/everywomanawards/).


Memset reported in November that Craig-Wood had been shortlisted for the IBM-sponsored Demeter award, given to the most inspiring entrepreneur aged between 26 and 35. On December 3, Craig-Wood was selected as the winner at a lunch ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel in London.



Memset co-founder and managing director Kate Craig-Wood.

"IBM is delighted to sponsor the everywoman Demeter Award for the fifth year and would like to congratulate Kate on her outstanding achievement," says Helen Cook, leader, UK women's leadership team at IBM. "Kate is a real inspiration and role model, helping to give confidence to other young women starting out on a similar journey."

The NatWest Everywoman National Awards was founded six years ago by Everywoman, an organization for women in business, to showcase the successes of female business owners, many of whom have overcome significant hurdles to get to where they are, says the organization.

Memset's press release also announced that Craig-Wood has recently been recognized as the IoD's South East Young Director of the Year, awarded to "young business people running companies with a turnover of less than £5m a year." She received the recognition on November 25.

The IoD Director of the Year awards are sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and highlight the outstanding success and social responsibility of business leaders across the South East.

Craig-Wood began her career in the Internet hosting business with the somewhat incongruous Masters degree in biomedical sciences. But after working at web hosting provider Easyspace and gaining experience in the industry, she founded Memset in 2002. Today, the company describes itself as "one of the UK's leading web and IT hosting providers with growth in the region of 75 percent year-on-year and an annual turnover of £1.2 million."

Memset says it also became the UK's first carbon neutral Internet service provider, in 2006.

As entrepreneurial women go, Craig-Wood bears the unusual distinction of having been an entrepreneur previous to having been a woman; Craig-Wood underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2005. Perhaps ironically, she says she has since encountered challenges trying to be taken seriously as a woman in a male-dominated industry. Those challenges may make Craig-Wood further emblematic of some of the spirit of the awards.

Craig-Wood is also a member of the British Computer Society's Data Centre Specialist Group and recently became the youngest person and third woman to join the board of Intellect UK, an IT, telecom and electronics trade association.

She also recently participated in the world's first skydive over Mount Everest to raise money for Computer Clubs 4 Girls, which aims to attract more girls to the sector by improving their technology skills.

Further information on Craig-Wood's rather varied professional and personal achievements can be found on her website.