SALE resident Sandy Lindsay, founder of Tangerine PR, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours, with a citation reading: ‘For services to business and young people.’

Sandy, aged 49, founded Tangerine in 2002 with the ambition to prove it is possible to run an ethical and profitable PR consultancy.

Tangerine is now one of the UK’s leading integrated communications consultancies, with more than 60 people, supporting world-leading brands including Peugeot, Pizza Hut and Reebok as well as Gary Neville’s and Ryan Giggs’ national Hotel & Café Football chain.

An apprenticeship programme - the Juice Academy - was founded two years ago to help fill a skills gap in the sector and create quality careers for young people (more than 80 so far).

Sandy said: “It wasn’t even my idea to start a business in the first place, but my husband Paul’s and I’ve had amazing support from him and many others in the past 13 years."

The Juice Academy is the third job creation programme Sandy has created at Tangerine. The first was Manchester Masters, a graduate retention programme and the second was Creative Break, which created business administration apprenticeship roles within creative agencies and marketing departments across the North West.

The Juice Academy is the first programme, however, through which Tangerine actually conducts the recruitment and the training.

“I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved at Tangerine – it was very important to me to prove an ethically run PR consultancy could be successful and I count myself very fortunate that I’m surrounded by so many people – clients and colleagues – who agree.”

Sandy is vice chairman of Forever Manchester - the Community Foundation for Greater Manchester - and a national ambassador for apprenticeships.