Megan Wilson
Megan Wilson, CEO of 360 Degrees, has been awarded the Top Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2010 Top Women Awards which took place at the Sandton Convention Centre in September.
The Top Women Awards were originally established to recognize and celebrate individual entrepreneurs, government departments and corporate entities for advancing female gender empowerment within the workplace. This year, a panel of judges chaired by Manola Sanchez Aragu from WITS Business School evaluated candidates across twenty one categories from across Africa, with an impressive ninety five finalists.Wilson says, of winning Top Woman Entrepreneur of the Year: “I feel humbled, privileged and honoured to receive this. It is an extraordinary initiative to highlight the work that women are doing. Of course there is a lot of work that still needs to happen to further empower women. Economic empowerment is one facet of the bigger picture. However, the fact that these awards go some way to recognise women, affords us a platform to take bigger and bolder strides forward. The Top Women Awards gives credibility to the finalists and award winners – credibility that opens new and potential avenues for business.”
Wilson has a background in acting, directing and lecturing. She started out working in children’s entertainment and then moved on to lecturing and tutoring Voice and Acting at WITS. Wilson then opened a creative scripting and directing company with partner Graham Hopkins in the nineties. The pair conceived, wrote and directed more than three hundred theatre shows for both the corporate and private sectors during this decade; winning several Loerie Awards along the way.
After working as Content Director on the first Big Brother series, Series Producer for Big Brother II, Series Director for Big Brother Africa and Live Show Producer for Project Fame in 2004; Wilson and Hopkins, together with Elton Hesketh, opened a new company called 360 Degrees Production House – which focuses on live events. As CEO, Wilson remains passionate about theatre and is honoured to work on great texts with committed and gifted South African artists. During this time she also wrote and directed Play@risk – which won the Ground Breakers award at the Aardklop festival. In 2006 Megan directed her second Macbeth with the drama students at WITS University and in 2007, Much Ado about Nothing for the Civic Theatre.
Wilson is passionate about gender empowerment, especially amongst aspiring female entrepreneurs: “Women leadership is still largely modelled on male paradigms. Our challenge is to redefine and reshape these often outdated ideas and practices to include more holistic forms of leadership. In my industry, and many smaller businesses, women are empowered and are often business owners and/or occupy executive positions. Women in smaller businesses are doing business in a different and often more efficient way. The challenge is for big business to start using some of the models created by the smaller businesses.”
Her advice for women entrepreneurs is simple: “Don’t wait. Do it! Often we doubt ourselves – wondering if our ideas are original or interesting or marketable or useful etc. Self doubt is our biggest stumbling block to inertia.”
Megan, we salute you!
