In a glittering awards ceremony on 19th September, alumna Emily Brooke MBE was named the GDST Trailblazer of the Year 2019.

This prestigious prize celebrates an alumna who has achieved remarkable success in the early stages of her career. Emily, who studied at our school until 2003, is a leading light in the world of technology having founded the company ‘Beryl’ in 2012. Beryl is a London based technology company with the sole mission to ‘Build a better world by getting more people in cities on bikes’. Their first product, the ‘Laserlight’, was Emily’s own creation and university project, a lifesaving innovation to tackle the biggest barrier to cycling in cities, which is personal safety. The Laserlight technology has been adopted by cities across the world and their most recent developments include a co-designing a new Santander Cycle in London, and launching a new bike share scheme of their own, which accelerates Emily and Beryl’s mission to improve the cities we live in by encouraging more people out of cars, buses and onto a sustainable mode of transport.

Emily was unable to attend the GDST ceremony due to commitments in Africa, but she sent a video clip to express her sincere thanks for the honour. She said “I am completely thrilled and overjoyed to win the Trailblazer Award…a massive thank you goes out to my fellow Royal High School girls and staff for telling my story so brilliantly, so thank you so much for that, and it genuinely is so exciting to imagine what paths those girls and future GDST girls will blaze.”

Emily was also shortlisted for this year’s ‘GDST Alumna of the Year’, and whilst she didn’t win on this occasion, she said, “It was really humbling to be included in this list of really impressive and inspiring women, so thank you very, very much.”

We are so proud of Emily and her achievements, and so grateful to all the girls and staff who supported Emily’s place in this competition. I wonder who will be our next RHS Trailblazer!