Philanthropist businessman wins our lifetime achievement
GRAHAM WYLIE SAYS HE IS ‘HUMBLED’
Reporter BUSINESSMAN and philanthropist Graham Wylie has won the Lifetime Achievement prize at our Pride of the North East Awards.
The awards, run in partnership with TSB, celebrate the very best of our region and the everyday heroes which make us proud to call the North East home.
Graham, 58, said he was “humbled” to find himself on the list.
He said: “I was delighted – I feel a bit humbled as well, because there will be a lot of great people, a lot of courage and bravery in that room.”
While still at university, Graham, who grew up in North Tyneside, developed the first version of the computer program which would become Sage Accounts. He co-founded the Sage Group around the program, and since then, the business has gone on to become a multi-million pound enterprise, employing thousands of people. After retiring from Sage in 2003, Graham went on to run a number of other businesses and to buy Close House golf club in Northumberland. But it’s with his charity fundraising that he’s made the greatest difference to many families across the North East. Dad-offour Graham was inspired to support the Children’s Heart Unit Fund (CHUF) at Newcastle’s Freeman hospital when his own daughter, Kiera, underwent open heart surgery there just after birth, in 2010.
After years of fundraising for the unit, he wanted to expand his charitable efforts in the hope of ensuring that every child in the North East has the opportunity to be as successful as he has been.
So in 2016, he set up the Graham Wylie Foundation, which hands grants to charities and groups across the region who support underprivileged or vulnerable young people.
The foundation’s first grant went to Hadrian School, in Newcastle’s West End, to help build a new therapy centre which will be invaluable to pupils with disabilities and profound learning difficulties.
Because the businessman meets all the administration costs himself, every penny donated to the foundation goes directly to deserving causes.
And he’s raised a huge amount himself, with events such as the British Masters golf tournament, at Close House, netting hundreds of thousands of pounds for the foundation’s beneficiaries.
Reflecting on the work which earned him the award, Graham said: “I’m very, very proud of developing the business, and even more so that it’s still going from strength to strength: I must have put down some strong foundations for a business that employs a lot of people. I’m proud of helping to put CHUF on the map, because when they first asked me to help out it wasn’t huge, it wasn’t very well known.”
Graham added he’s looking forward to helping children from across the North East for many years to come. Graham Wylie