Just wow! You know that question that often pops up – if you could choose just a few people to have dinner with, well, Alison Cork would certainly be on my list, she is an absolute powerhouse, doer, thinker, entrepreneur and all round great lady to support, motivate, inspire, whilst knowing how to pull something out of the bag in an absolute humanitarian crisis to help us all do SOMETHING, when we may feel we can do nothing! I had the pleasure of interviewing Alison on Sunday March 6th 2022; we had planned the interview to talk about her journey in business, politics and health, but as the Ukraine Crisis unfolded, Alison also launched the #smallbusinessbigdifference campaign, which you can learn about on the next few pages.
You can listen to our full unedited interview by following this link
You've been an entrepreneur for well over 25 years. Tell me a bit about how You started and grew your businesses.
You've always been a supporter of women in business and started a charity to support women to start a business. Why?
I always wanted to run my own business; by process of elimination, I learned that I would be better off ploughing my own furrow, as I was very independently minded. In the 80’s that was quite unusual; I was inspired by Martha Stewart and began to focus on what I wanted to make my long -term business. I launched Alison at Home, that became an on-line business and I presented television programmes, my favourite being Home in the Country, which was filmed from my then cottage in Wales, and to rapidly condense the last 2 years I have started working on shopping television and launched Alison at Home on QVC, and I pleased to share that during the pandemic we have launched in America.
I have always been a great champion of women’s empowerment. I went to an all-girls school and that I think had quite an impact on me supporting women to fulfil their potential. I realised as a woman in business there was a real lack of parity between men and women in business and so I launched Make it Your Business, which is a not-for -profit, to help and support women running their own businesses. Currently only 1 in 5 businesses are women lead, which isn’t good enough, apart from being a complete economic miss. As an economy we need that contribution from women, and we just don’t have it.
