Young entrepreneur Zoe Jackson held a special celebration party last week to thank her supporters for their backing over the past few years.

Zoe, who was recently awarded an MBE, used the event at The Brickyard pub to not only revisit her remarkable career to date, but also to raise funds for her charity, the Dream Foundation, which supports young people across Hertfordshire who face financial or social hardship through providing subsidised or free access to training, education and performance opportunities in the performing arts.

During her thank you speech, Zoe took guests through a timeline of Living the Dream and her vision, starting from her early childhood memories of singing, dancing and entrepreneurship, through to her auditioning and fundraising for a course at the National Youth Theatre at age 16, to putting on her first showcase, graduating from LIPA and being inspired by the all famous T-Mobile Flashmob which propelled her to do her own New Year’s Eve Flashmob at St Pancras International in 2010 in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Since then, Zoe’s company has developed into a school of performing arts, a dance company, talent agency and charity, the Dream Foundation.

Zoe thanked everyone who has supported her over the past 10 years, including her family, the Dream Team, loyal parents of Living the Dream, the team at The Brickyard, Hertfordshire county councillors, previous Mayor Geoff Harrison who supported the Dream Foundation as his chosen charity of the year 2014-2015, Chamber of Commerce executive director Lisa Bates, director of Cheeky Munkey Graham Lane, Zoe Shepherd and staff at Beaumont School who taught Zoe when she was a student there, the Herts Advertiser and Sir Richard Branson and his team at Virgin, with whom she has worked closely with in the past to launch the Start Up Loan scheme, a scheme to support young entrepreneurs like herself.