LEICESTER, 11 September 2008 – Leicester insurance broker, John Mallett from Aon, has successfully mentored students from Woodlands School in Coventry to win a national business competition with their chatroom security system. Angel Monitor allows parents to set up buzz words which will alert them when their children might be having dangerous conversations online.

The Big Deal 2008 competition, organised by the University of Warwick, teamed up groups of year 10 school students with business people from leading UK companies.  Innovatively using online mentoring via blogs, the teams developed a new enterprise idea and work up a full business plan to pitch to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ of top business experts. The dragons were especially impressed with The Woodlanders’ text alert demonstration, which went smoothly and showed the robustness of the product.

John Mallett, a business systems director at Aon in Leicester, said: “Mentoring online via blogs was an ingenious way to support the students while juggling the day job. It’s really important to help nurture the next generation of business leaders by sharing your commercial knowledge in any way you can. It was an incredibly rewarding experience and the team’s win was the icing on the cake.”

Louisa Shorland, programme manager at the University of Warwick, commented: “John was a great mentor: enthusiastic and willing to share his business expertise and experience with his team. I would like to thank Aon for supporting The Big Deal. The generous support of all the mentors and companies involved provided the students with a unique insight into the business world.”

The Woodlanders added that despite being very busy, John managed to give them a lot of useful advice. And what was the best part of the project? “I think it was the moment when we first tested it,” said team member Mark. “I just thought ‘It’s working! It’s actually working!’”

The system should be finalised shortly after which time the team hope to start racking up their first sales.

Emma Rogers from Aon’s Birmingham office also participated, mentoring a team whose idea was to create an eco-friendly mode of transport.

Ends
PICTURED: John Mallet (centre) with (L-R) Tom Beasley, Mark Ormesher, Jake Hughes and Daniel Cook

For more information contact:
Alexandra Lewis
0207 882 0541
Alexandra.lewis@aon.co.uk
http://aon.mediaroom.com

About Aon
Aon Corporation (NYSE:AOC) is the leading global provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, human capital and management consulting. Through its 36,000 colleagues worldwide, Aon readily delivers distinctive client value via innovative and effective risk management and workforce productivity solutions. Our industry-leading global resources, technical expertise and industry knowledge are delivered locally through more than 500 offices in more than 120 countries. Aon was named the world’s “best broker” by Euromoney magazine’s 2008 Insurance Survey. Aon also was ranked by A.M. Best as the number one global insurance brokerage in 2007 based on brokerage revenues, and voted best insurance intermediary, best reinsurance intermediary, and best employee benefits consulting firm in 2007 by the readers of Business Insurance. For more information on Aon, log onto www.aon.com

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