Networking queens recognised in Queen’s Birthday Honours

Julia Hobsbawm. (Image: � Nigel Sutton email pictures@nigelsuttonphotography.com)

Carole Stone, 73, who boasts a contacts list of more than 50,000 names, and Julia Hobsbawm, 50, the UK’s first honorary professor of networking, were both honoured in this year’s list released last week.

Ms Stone has been made a CBE for services to market research and charity and Ms Hobsbawm has become an OBE for services to business.

Former BBC radio producer Ms Stone, who lives with her husband, veteran TV journalist Richard Lindley, in Gospel Oak, said: “It’s certainly very exciting and I am thrilled.”

Ms Stone founded the YouGovStone think-tank, part of market research firm YouGov, a global panel of over 5,000 leaders in their professional fields.

She is also a patron of several charities, including mental health charity SANE.

For years, Ms Stone hosted a weekly “salon” at her flat in Covent Garden bringing together up to 100 figures from different industries, including politics, media and business, under the same roof.

“All my life, one way or another, I’ve been bringing people together to discuss issues,” she said. “It started off because I had a brother who had a mental illness and was very shy and a mother who didn’t have the chances I had.

“I always wanted my brother to meet people in the hope he would talk to them and I knew my mother would enjoy the chance to meet people.”

Ms Hobsbawm, of Cheverton Road, Archway, is the daughter of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and grew up in Nassington Road, Hampstead.

The former Camden School for Girls pupil runs networking consultancy firm Editorial Intelligence, which she set up in 2005, and was made honorary visiting professor in networking at the Cass Business School in 2011.

She said of her honour: “I’m really, really thrilled and very glad to have swelled the ranks of people living in the Ham&High region with a Birthday Honour.”