Seventeen UWA members were nominated and invited to submit their applications. The judges for this year’s competition included local publication editors and a social media expert. After a rigorous voting process, the top seven entrants were interviewed, and Beverley was adjudicated the overall winner, with Karen Stark (owner of So Scrumptious – a biscuit supplier for supermarkets – Checkers and Spar) and Lynn Easton (of Afscot Financial Services, specialising in short term insurance brokerage in the hospitality industry) as first and second runners up respectively.

Beverley’s mother ran a Beauty School as well as a Beauty Salon in Gauteng, and this is where she trained as a therapist after finishing school. Being a beautician was in her blood, and she became a top therapist and worked with her mother for 20 years.

In 2012 Beverley moved to Durban to be with her childhood sweetheart, and in January 2013, she started her own salon, Bev’s Beauty and Wellness, in Mt Edgecombe. Unfortunately, a few months later, her rekindled love was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Beverley’s business had to be put on hold whilst caring for her partner until his passing in August 2013.

As she struggled to get her business back on track, more heartache followed – her father, also a cancer sufferer, passed away in 2016, and so did her new partner of 7 years in February 2022. It was whilst caring for her own loved ones that Beverley’s passion for Hospice started. She saw the amazing work they did for terminally ill people and therefore use every opportunity to raise funds for Hospice.

Beverley ran her salon in Mt Edgecombe for 5 years before moving to Umhlanga, where she ran it from a B&B for a short stint of 18 months.

Shortly after relocating her salon to the Hirsch’s Homestore in Umhlanga, the Covid pandemic and lockdown drained the business. Thinking out of the box, she started taking ‘one on one’ clients, which kept her going during the dreaded “Covid period”. Now a bit more than a year later, the business has picked up once again, and she recently employed a therapist to assist her.

To keep abreast in the “beauty” world, Beverley still attends different beauty courses on a regular basis to enhance her own skills. The latest one is Microneedling using NCTF, the best ingredients from France, making Bev’s Beauty and Wellness only the 2nd beauty salon in Durban to offer it, and she works in conjunction with a local medical doctor.

We represent our members who are from the wider Durban area and include entrepreneurs in various industries such as Health and Wellness, Insurance, Banking, Estate Agencies, Social Media, Branding, Hospitality, Law etc.

We are a dedicated committee already working towards making this term another successful year for all our members through our various activities: UWA networking breakfasts and dinners, the UWA coffee club, our UWA book club, UWA Achiever of the Year programme as well as advertising on our UWA ads group.

This year we celebrate UWA’s 29th anniversary, and we have plans to transform one of the rooms at Granny Griffs Sugar Shack in Durban North into a UWA meeting room. This meeting room will be available to our members to host meetings, presentations, and consultations and will also be the permanent ‘home’ to showcase 29 years of events, pictures and press releases, history, and memorabilia. In addition, other visitors to Granny Griffs will also have an opportunity to see what we are about and encourage new memberships to our well-established organisation.

We are all passionate about UWA, and the feedback from guests confirms the warmth and energy that they feel at our events, something that our members already experience, and we want to carry this forward into the new year. But without the inspiration, hard work, commitment and passion of our committee and our members, this would not be possible.

We look forward to a positive membership renewal rate and welcoming new members to our community. If you would like to renew or join us this year, click on the Membership tab.