Venus Awards to launch in Cornwall

Award-winning Devon businesswoman and journalist Alexis Bowater has announced that she will be standing down as Leading Women UK Champion to concentrate on organising the prestigious Venus Awards in Devon and Cornwall this year.

Alexis, who runs Bowater Communications and is well known in the west country having presented the ITV news here for almost a decade, launched networking group Leading Women UK in Plymouth in 2013 and has acted as an unpaid ambassador for the organisation and for promoting women in business ever since.

She is now regional parter for the Venus Awards, dubbed 'The Working Women's Oscars' which last year attracted more than 2,000 nominations in Devon alone. Winners from each county go on to the UK finals and Devon scooped three national titles in the awards last year

This year she will be taking the Venus Awards into Cornwall for the first time. "It's really exciting to be able to offer this kind of formal recognition and affirmation to businesswomen west of the Tamar," said Alexis.

"The Venus Awards are an astonishing, life-changing celebration of women in business and the feedback that I have been receiving so far about even the possibility of opening them up to the county has been astonishingly enthusiastic.

We know from the impact they have had in Devon that they change lives and rocket-fuel businesses and I'm absolutely thrilled to be given the opportunity to share this with Cornwall.

Last year the west country took three national titles and this year I am determined to help make sure it is many more than that.

I have been a passionate supporter of Leading Women UK and all they do for women in business but the time has come to concentrate on a new venture. I will still be networking in Plymouth with my colleague Plymouth Chamber Networker of the Year Clare Geraghty, Premier Relationship Manager from Barclays but I will no longer be representing Leading Women UK."