CHARITY CEO Maura Jackson has been announced as the winner of Leader of The Year at The Investors in People Award 2021.

Maura has been at Backup North West as CEO for almost 10 years and in that time has grown it from a turnover of £465k a year to £3.2 million.

She has developed new services, created local jobs, prevented youth homelessness, rebranded from Bolton Young Persons Housing Scheme and started various annual community events and launched the social enterprise The Van amongst other things.

She had to find in excess of £500k income to maintain services at Backup for 2021 and has done that.

Dr Steve Sharples, chairman of Backup Trustees said, “We are so proud of Maura and all the team at Backup. She has worked tirelessly for years to build and secure the charity and ultimately prevent youth homelessness across Bolton.”

Dr Sharples added, “As a company, we’ve experienced many challenges including increasing demand for services, Covid, funding cuts and more recently the death of a much valued service user. Maura has led the team through the challenges and they have met them with sensitivity and resilience.

“We’ve also had plenty of wins that gave us the confidence to enter The Investors in People Awards including securing Investors in People GOLD for the third time in 2020, securing Big Lottery and Henry Smith foundation funding this year of almost half a million pounds, upskilling our colleagues with fabulous training, developing some amazing local partnerships and events.

Paul Devoy, Investors in People said: “As a winner, Maura Jackson really stands out amongst the crowd.”

The award will illustrate how people are lucky to work for such a great organisation and more importantly how privileged they are to be supporting young people who are homeless in Bolton. T

The Investors in People Awards is about recognising the organisations and individuals committed to making work better for their people.