Liv Garfield, the youngest female chief executive of a FTSE100 company, and boss of one of the UK’s biggest water companies, has received an honorary degree for her outstanding contribution to business.
The Chief Executive of Severn Trent, joined more than 1,000 postgraduate students from more than 100 countries receiving their degrees from Cranfield University today (27 June), on the first of two days of celebrations this week.
She took up the reins at Severn Trent in April 2014, becoming the youngest woman to be appointed chief executive of a FTSE100 company.
Alongside her role at Severn Trent, she works with the Government to promote the UK’s excellence in business internationally, as business ambassador for the Department for International Trade.
Liv Garfield said:
“I am incredibly honoured to have been chosen to receive an honorary degree from a highly-sought after institution such as Cranfield. I accept this lovely accolade on behalf of my friends and colleagues at Severn Trent who support and guide me each day. It is the trelliswork of my colleagues that merits the achievement.”
Last year, she was crowned Business Woman of the Year at the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman awards.
Professor Paul Jeffrey, Director of Water at Cranfield University, said:
“I am delighted that Liv is receiving an honorary degree. Her rise to the top has been phenomenal, and can be attributed to her dedication, attention to detail and commitment to excellence. Severn Trent is responsible for providing clean water to and taking away waste water from around eight million households across the Midlands and Wales, and Liv’s leadership of the company is inspirational.”
Before joining Severn Trent, she worked at British Telecom for 12 years, latterly as chief executive of its engineering division, Openreach. In this role, she was responsible for implementing one of the fastest and most ambitious deployments of fibre broadband in the world, which she delivered 18 months ahead of schedule.
Last year, the partnership between Cranfield University and Severn Trent was named one of the ‘top 100 corporate-academic partnerships’ in the world by leading international academic journal, Nature.
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