Young students from Wexham School in Slough were visited by two influential business figures last week (16th November) as part of events run by youth mentoring initiative Mosaic during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

The young people met the two local, successful entrepreneurs – CEO Naveed Ahmed and accountant Saira Majid – who told their own stories of what had led them into business and how they had succeeded.

As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Naveed Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Goldteam Recruitment Limited, a 21st century technology-driven recruitment organisation, was hoping to encourage the pupils to consider starting their own businesses in the future and provided some practical skills for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Naveed, winner of ‘Entrepreneur of the year’ from the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce in 2010, said: “The young people were very engaging and enthusiastic. I am confident many will go on to be successful entrepreneurs and I am delighted to provide them with any support and help I can.”

Saira Majid, an accountant and mentor, has worked in the IT sector with ICL, Fujitsu and Xansa PLC, before setting up her own business in 2005. She focused on what business skills the young people will need to learn and also offered support for the school with their upcoming Apax-Mosaic Enterprise Challenge.

Saira said: “It was an absolute pleasure mentoring and supporting last year’s Enterprise Challenge students and Wexham did fantastically well to get to the finals against teams across the whole country. I am looking forward to helping this year’s team do even better.”

More than 100 fourteen- and fifteen-year-old students attended the talk prior to 30 of them being selected to take part in this year’s Apax-Mosaic Enterprise Challenge, following in the footsteps of last year’s students from Wexham School – including Ali Haidaree, Nihal Kamaly and Tanbir Kamali (pictured above left) – who finished in the top five in the national competition.

Our Enterprise Challenge is a national competition designed to inspire young people to uncover their entrepreneurial spirit and learn about being the successful businessmen and women of the future. Find out more about the Enterprise Challenge competition and how you can get involved