Unitec Congratulates West Auckland businesses

Unitec Congratulates West Auckland businesses in WestPac Best of the Best awards

West Auckland’s business environment is blossoming and Unitec is proud to be associated with several of the winners from this week’s WestPac Business Awards Best of the Best prize giving.

Lisa Woolley, the inspirational CEO of West Auckland-based VisionWest Community Trust, was announced as the Best of the Best in Business Leadership at the gala dinner at Auckland’s Langham Hotel for her work in steering the community organisation.

The Best of the Best in Business awards sees the top performers from the Central, West, South and North categories of the WestPac Business Awards Auckland judged again to find a supreme winners across a range of categories.

Woolley is a graduate of Unitec’s Not for Profit Graduate Diploma and last year completed a Masters in Social Practice at Unitec.

VisionWest has a close relationship with the institute, providing placements for social work, communication and business students and has worked with the architecture and landscape students to help with the establishment of a social housing project in Henderson.

The housing project used modern, eco-conscious building techniques to prove affordable housing can be sustainable and of high quality.

In fact these houses have gone on to win a number of architectural awards.

She was mentored through her entry into the 2014 WestPac Auckland Business Awards – West by Unitec management and marketing lecturer Ken Newlands who says her latest achievement is well-deserved.

“It is great to have been able to help Lisa where we can,” he says.

“We’ve been quietly in the background and we hope to be able to develop our relationship, and she is very keen to see it continue too.”

Woolley says winning the award was “overwhelming” but also a wonderful achievement for the whole organisation.

She is also keen to build on the relationship with Unitec.

“It’s great to have support and we can really help each other to achieve better outcomes for people in our community out West.”

Unitec staff were also involved in helping two other West Auckland businesses that made it to the Best of the Best finals, including Be Nourished which was up for an Excellence in Marketing award and Plumbing World Henderson which was up for an Excellence in Customer Service award.

Unitec CE Rick Ede says West Auckland business can take heart from Lisa Woolley’s big win.

“You don’t need to be in central Auckland to get great results in the business world,” he says.

“Unitec is so proud to have helped, in whatever way we have, these businesses put themselves forward for these awards. It makes a lot of sense for business and education to work together.”

ENDS

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