I genuinely love the North.
I might be an adopted Northerner but I’ve made the North my home for nearly 20 years.
Today BusinessCloud is publishing the 2025 Northern Leaders list to shine a light on more than 200 of the people who make the North a better place by their actions.
This year’s list includes 74 new names from the North West, North East and Yorkshire & Humberside and includes figures from the world of business, charity, sport, property, politics, philanthropy and TV.
I thought I’d run through some of the names on the list.
• Susannah Penney is a medical director of Greater Manchester Cancer Alliance and a consultant head and neck surgeon;
• Stacey Copeland has represented her country at both football and boxing. She founded the Pave The Way charity to challenge gender stereotypes for girls, boys, men and women;
• Laura Earnshaw is the founder and CEO of MyHappymind and is on a mission to teach every single child in the UK and beyond how to look after their own mental health;
• Damian Hughes is best known as the co-host of The High Performance Podcast and founded The School Coat Charity to provide coats for those children most in need;
• Martin Keelagher is a successful serial entrepreneur but his wife Claire died of a rare cancer eight days after they got married at The Christie – leaving him to bring up their son on his own. He launched Claire’s Wishes in her memory;
• Husband-and-wife team James and Michelle Laithwaite founded online meal prep business FuelHub six years ago and have already won some of the biggest names in sport as clients; and
• Emma Morris proudly lives in Burnley and is able to showcase the North through her job as executive editor at BBC Studios.
2025 Northern Leaders list celebrates region’s game-changers
The 2025 Northern Leaders list is full of similarly inspirational stories and we’ll be showcasing some of them at our awards dinner on 20th November at KPMG’s Manchester offices.
I will never forget the moment from the inaugural dinner when former England and Manchester City captain Steph Houghton MBE walked away with the Northern Leaders Overall Award.
The presentation was made by Jonathan Bernstein, son of former Manchester City Council chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein, who inspired Northern Leaders.
It was an exhaustive process to get to today’s point when we could finally publish the 200+ names on the 2025 Northern Leaders list and I thought I’d explain what was involved.
Anybody could nominate and we ended up with more than 500 names on the long list.
A painstaking judging process followed – combined with a protracted stage of due diligence – before we whittled it down to the final 200+ names.
It’s worth saying that co-founders and siblings are listed as one entry so the 2025 Northern Leaders list contains slightly more than 200 names.
I’m hugely grateful to KPMG for hosting our awards dinner on 20th November and to our headline sponsor OBI, alongside law firm CG, GM Business Growth Hub, Rochdale Development Agency, insurance giant Lockton and J.P. Morgan Private Bank
I’m proud to live in the North – now more than ever.