Welcome to new member, Julie Dodsworh

On Friday 21st August we were very pleased to welcome Julie as a new member of York Rotary. Julie is a serial entrepreneur, having started a thriving business (with her husband Simon) providing Plant Displays to commercial businesses across the country, including football clubs and hotel chains.

They retired from this business in their early 60s.  But then she started a new ‘third age business’ of creating designs under license for home and gifts on the high street.  Julie has very good artistic skills, and some of her ideas came from painting the interior of a canal boat that they own!

She has created designs for Barbour, Royal botanicals of Kew, Shaun the sheep and many more well-known brands.  If you visit Browns store in York, you can see a large display of her work (just by the escalator on the ground floor).

Here businesses have earned many national awards and recognition – most notably recognizing the people management of her business (zero staff turnover) which is so positive to see in a small business.

Alongside this, Julie is an author – most notably books on walking (the walks ending at a tea-room!) in Yorkshire. She did all the illustrations (maps) herself.  She also runs marathons (7 of them) and does lots of walking, and is a choir.  So there are many skills she brings to Rotary!!

Over the years she and Simon became local fund raisers for Variety the children’s charity. Through their networks they’ve raised over £160k including 2 Sunshine coaches.

Julie has already participated in many York Rotary activities – helping with fundraising, and at Dragon Boats;  and clearly will be a very active member! 

We welcome her to Rotary.

Brian Joscelyne