A Huddersfield-born TV journalist and a self-made retail magnate are among the people set to be honoured by the University of Huddersfield.
TV presenter Nina Hossain and Iceland boss Malcolm Walker are included in eight people from the media, science, enterprise, politics and the arts who will receive honorary doctorates in July.
They will be joined by cult DJ Richie Hawtin, Leeds businessman and consultant Nigel Foster, Government science advisor Prof Sir Peter Knight, chartered engineer and academic Sir John O’Reilly, Chinese engineering professor Li Peigen and local politician Baroness Kath Pinnock of Cleckheaton.
Nina is Huddersfield born and bred and attended Newsome High School and Greenhead College. After University study and spells at ITV regional news in Carlisle and the BBC in London, she joined ITN in 2004.
She has just celebrated 10 years with ITN, where she has reported live on some of the biggest events of the past decade, including the London bombings, the 2012 Olympics, the Royal Wedding and Margaret Thatcher’s death. She presents the flagship News at Ten programme and for 15 years has been the face of the evening news in the Capital, first with BBC London and now with ITV News London. Nina has also fronted the ITV current affairs programme Exposure.
Over her 20-year career, she has interviewed top politicians including prime ministers, film stars, rock stars and sporting heroes, listing her personal favourites as R.E.M., Lord Coe, Mo Farah, Lewis Hamilton, Duran Duran, Boris Johnson and the late Patrick Swayze. Memorable recent encounters include her interview with a British doctor who had just returned from treating Ebola victims in Sierra Leone.
She also presents the Examiner Community Awards.
Malcolm Walker CBE is the founder of Iceland Foods. He grew up in Grange Moor, and began his entrepreneurial career as a dance promoter while still at school. He entered retailing as a trainee manager with Woolworths in Huddersfield. He founded Iceland as a sideline in 1970, opening a single small shop in Oswestry with a starting capital of just £30. Mr Walker was Chairman and CEO of Iceland through 30 years of continuous sales growth, in all but one of which the company also increased its profits.
He left Iceland in 2001, but returned as CEO in February 2005. Over the next seven years he achieved a transformation in performance and morale, with like-for-like sales increasing by more than 50 per cent. In 2012, he led a £1.5 billion management buyout and significantly accelerated Iceland’s store opening programme in the UK, developed a new Iceland retail business in the Czech Republic, acquired the formerly franchised Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland and substantially expanded the Iceland brand in new export markets.
Baroness Pinnock of Cleckheaton moved to West Yorkshire 40 years ago from Birmingham to take up a history teaching post in a secondary school. She quickly became involved in the local community was elected as a councillor for the Cleckheaton ward in 1987.
Kath Pinnock was leader of Kirklees Council from 2000 to 2006 and was leader of Kirklees Liberal Democrat councillors from 1991 to 2014. In 2014, was appointed to the House of Lords.
Nigel Foster is an experienced executive and non-executive director holding board roles at major international companies in the UK and overseas.
Richie Hawtin is an English-born Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno’s second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of techno since the mid-1990s.
Prof Sir Peter Knight – a Fellow of the Royal Society – is Senior Research Investigator in Physics at Imperial College and Senior Fellow in Residence at the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, Chicheley Hall and Past-President of the Institute of Physics.
Sir John O’Reilly is a chartered engineer specialising in the field of information and communication technology and the author or co-author of some 350 or so research and technology publications, including three books on aspects of telecommunications.
Li Peigen is one of China’s most respected professors in the fields of mechanical engineering and computer-integrated manufacturing.
