Future Faces annual dinner and awards - reflections of a former President

Adam Maguire is a Partner in the Family Law Team at Clarke Willmott LLP

It was a decade ago when a number of members of the Future Faces Executive Committee began to seriously discuss staging our own awards. Future Faces had been going for a couple of years at that stage and we felt the time was right but we were, with hindsight, perhaps a little too ambitious to begin with - no bad thing!

Birmingham Young Professional of the Year was, at that time, already a well-established event but we really wanted an event to showcase our members, many of whom did not fit into the traditional categories of other awards events, as well as other young talent across the city.

In 2014 we really started to get planning, setting up the subcommittee which organised and launched the first Future Faces Annual Dinner and Awards which took place in 2015. It seems such a long time ago that we were sat in the pub brainstorming ideas and the categories we wanted to recognise.

Having led the subcommittee which organised the first of these events (a role which, for several years at least, was traditionally taken by the vice president), I became President of Future Faces in 2015, a role which was incredibly rewarding, boosting my confidence and helping me to grow my network which has shaped my career since.

The first event was an immediate success and I remain enormously proud to have seen this grow from a simple vision into the flagship young professional event in the region's calendar it remains to this day.

Following the merger between Future Faces and BPS Birmingham which ran BYPY, the event is now bigger than ever and is, without a doubt, the premier event for the next generation of talent in the Greater Birmingham area.

Humble beginnings, but a bright future for all who are recognised.