Margaret Hirsch, COE of the Hirsch Group has been given the great honour of being selected to be inducted into the Global Women Leaders Hall of Fame (2014) for countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The induction ceremony will take place on the 20th and 21st November in Dubai. The Global Women Leaders Hall of Fame is an unprecedented global network of great women leaders who are improving and evolving the societies they represent.
As well as her “day job” as the Chief Operations Executive of the Hirsch Group (the largest independently owned Appliance and Electronics company in South Africa) Margaret has made it her mission to help South African Girls and Women to reach their full potential at school and in the work place. She has won several business awards over the last few years, including the BWASA Business Woman of the Year (Entrepreneur) and the SANLAM Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship. Hirsch’s were given an award for their Women’s Empowerment Programme – the Girls With Dignity Project – at the TOP Women Awards ceremony in 2013. The project has seen her visit schools around South Africa handing out reusable panty packs to girls who cannot afford sanitary protection and end up missing a week of school every month because of this. The girls are achieving much better results at school now that they are able to attend school on a regular basis.
Margaret has also started a Margaret Hirsch Business Woman of the Month (leading up to the Business Woman of the Year) competition in all of the areas in which Hirsch’s operates (11 throughout South Africa, the most recent is their Silverlakes branch that opens on October 24). She started up the competitions because she could see how she – and Hirsch’s – had benefited from the business accolades she has received over the years. “Winning these awards has been wonderful – both for Hirsch’s and for me personally, and I would like to see this happening to other women in business.As women, we tend not to be assertive enough. There are so many fantastic women out there who are not coming forward to be acknowledged for their contribution to the business world, and I would like to encourage them to come forward and enter the competition.” She explained.