Anne Minors Wins 2014 First Women Award for The Built Environment

	Anne Minors receives 2014 First Women Award for The Built Environment.

From a long list of hundreds to a shortlist of five, including women at the top of their game in architecture, planning, construction, and contracting, Anne Minors was awarded the 2014 First Women Award for The Built Environment for her success in four continents and her pioneering of theatre consulting in Kazakhstan and Turkey.

Described as "the doyenne of the international theatre consulting world, creating wonderful pioneering performance spaces," by Gwyn Miles, ex-director of Somerset House Trust and ex-head of projects of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Minors has spent 30 years combining science with art to produce spaces that look and sound beautiful and inspire further creativity.

Bestowed at the London Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square in June, the First Women Awards were created by the CBI and Real Business to increase diversity in the workplace. The broad canvas and international reach of Minors' firm AMPC (Anne Minors Performance Consultants) was reflected in support from top theatre practitioners who create their work within her buildings, from building owners and clients, award-winning architect collaborators, as well as journalists, academicians, and religious leaders.

The judges cited: "Anne operates her business with an obvious passion and will leave a legacy that whole communities will enjoy long into the future."

"A true inspiration and a brilliant collaborator, Anne has taken opportunities -- no matter how scary they may have seemed at the time -- and used them to further women in the industry."

In her acceptance speech, Minors stated that it was following her passions and volunteering that had opened up many of the opportunities she found in life. Her education and her intuition had helped her to work in many new and different circumstances abroad. "If I would offer any advice it would be to say, take risks, but with integrity," she said. "Do things that others would not do. Find your own place and purpose in the forest. I have felt at my free-est and learned the most about the human spirit in places like Kazakhstan and Hong Kong in the 1980's, because in a different culture, I have had to look for the common denominator and the human connection."

Minors is looking forward to continuing her drive to extend the diversity and flexible working that she has achieved in her own business to the theatre consulting and building world. Among other ambitions, Minors wishes to place the spotlight on collaboration on building sites, knowing that when this happens the experience is beneficial to all.

She also wishes to make younger women aware of the innate competence and skills they have which they can apply to science and engineering, and, over all, to continue to design a greater range of spaces that promote good communication with ease for all generations and cross generations.