Dame Wendy Pye, the first woman to be inducted into the Business Hall of Fame, is widely considered to have established one of the most successful educational export companies.
She was knighted for services to business and education in 2013 and has received many other awards for her pioneering attitude to exports and the role of women in business. Most recently she was awarded NEXT’s Woman of the Year Award for education.
After selling the lucrative North American rights to her business, Sunshine Books, in the 1990s, her company is now focused on multimedia learning in Asia and Europe.
Dame Wendy founded her international publishing empire on her core belief that literacy is a way out of poverty and has spent the past 35 years providing platforms for millions of children to learn to read.
Over the past year she has continued that mission.
Dame Wendy says her focus has turned to her Sunshine Super Reader, a solar-powered digital tablet pre-loaded with hundreds of e-books for children around the world with little or no access to literature.
She says Reader sales are going well in Southeast Asia and over the next year she expects to form new partnerships with major direct marketing companies to extend the Reader’s reach.
“My dream is to empower the children of the world to learn to read. We know that children who are successful readers feel good about themselves and succeed through education,” she says.
“The only way the world will move out of poverty is through education. Giving the world options to make this choice is what drives me.”