41. Gurjeet Kaur Bains, The Sikh Times

Gurjeet arrived in the UK in 1961. Her family settled in Hertfordshire, where her father ran a business. Tragedy was to strike when her father died leaving her mother in a new country with smalln children to raise on her own.

Despite this difficult situation Gurjeet worked hard at school and set her sights on becoming a nurse, something she wanted to do from a very early age. She qualified in 1978.

However, after a year she came to realise that nursing was not as challenging as she thought it would be and she left the profession. She quickly got another job as an underwriter and soon married.

Gurjeet realised that she needed more of a challenge in relation to work and entered the engineering
industry and got a job as a machinist.

Within six weeks she was offered a supervisory role, This was a challenge, not least that the organisation
had no people of Asian heritage in middle or senior roles and she was younger than most of the other managers. She worked her way up to assistant director rapidly.

She also became involved in community activity, becoming a school governor and chair of a community association.

Family commitments took her out of full-time employment but only for a short while.

In 1986, she bought a shop with family members in Peterborough. The entrepreneur was born.

Just five years later due to the rapid growth of the business, she won Business Woman of the Year award.

Needing to do more, she worked part-time on a local newspaper as a sales person where she asked if she could write an article. The impact was such that she was soon involved in editorial issues.

A chance conversation later led to her being asked to become the Editor of the Sikh Times, a weekly English Punjab newspaper that is published in Birmingham and distributed nationally.

Her community involvement continued and increasingly Gurjeet was asked to advise and contribute
to many organisations with an equality focus. She was appointed as the first female elected chair of the Institute of Asian Business in 2005 and as a council member of both Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Birmingham Professional DiverCity.

She was invited to become one of a number of Ambassadors for the UK's successful 2012 Olympics
Bidding Team.

Gurjeet received the Asian Jewel Award for Art, Media and Sport in 2006.