in-business YBL Program
Issue No. 60 - August/ /
Naughton sweeps twin YBL 2011 titles
Finance industry professional, Tish Naughton has won both the Business Improvement Project and Community Improvement Project elements of the 2011 Young Business Leader program.
It is the first time the Royal Society for the Blind’s prestigious business leader development program has been swept by an overall winner.
Tish had a reasonable idea from the fundraising totals that she was in the top three, but the exact difference was small and she was delighted when she was named the winner.
To collect a second title for the best Business Improvement Project was “overwhelming”.
“It was a sense not so much of surprise as relief – that all that work I had put in had paid off,” Tish says.
She says the response to the YBL win has been amazing, with “heaps of emails and phone calls”.
The program was not easy, not because YBL challenges were difficult but because life threw some terrible hurdles Tish’s way.
Her employment situation when the program began was entirely negative. When she left that organization, she had to start the BIP part of the program all over again.
A knee problem saw her take time off to recuperate from surgery. On the same day she quit smoking for a fundraiser, her three-year relationship ended.
At the same time, a close friend took his own life. Under severe pressure, Tish was almost ready to quit the program.
“These were life training hurdles,” she says. “It was not the difficulty of YBL necessarily, but when life gets in the way to make things harder.”
Tish showed her resilience, recommitting to her task and making it work. First, she had to revive her Business Improvement Project.
“I had several good ideas, but because I had started them with my previous employer, I felt I couldn’t proceed,” she says.
She started af...
