Animal breeding consultant and founder and director of Genetic Gains Ltd, Julia Aspinall, and founder and director of online marketing company BKA Interactive Ltd, Barbara Anderson, join last year's recipients Amanda Ellis, Miranda Caird and Sue Stevely-Cole.
About 100 guests attended the ceremony.
Ms Aspinall, who attended Columba from 1971-75 as a boarder from Wanaka, graduated from the University of Otago in 1979 with a science degree and worked with Maf in Mosgiel as a breeding technician.
In 1982, she moved to Canada to study at the University of Guelph where she completed a MSc.
On returning to New Zealand and Maf and Ag Research, she developed commercial sheep artificial insemination and embryo transfer services and became a breeding consultant, employed by both organisations in management.
She established Genetic Gains Ltd in 1995, while managing Woodlands Artificial Breeding Centre for AgResearch, with the latter bought by Genetic Gains in 1999.
Subsequently, Ms Aspinall provides services for a national database of breeders, which improves the genetic pool of the New Zealand sheep industry, and she has been contracted by businesses around the world - an entrepreneurial enterprise which caught the attention of Columba's selection committee.
Ms Anderson, who attended Columba from 1972-76 and graduated from the University of Otago with a teaching degree before starting a family, later retrained at the Auckland University of Technology's art school and gained a degree in visual art.
She worked for Saatchi & Saatchi, then the online division of CMP Medica.
She started up BKA, working from home to custom-build web-based solutions, eventually assisting more than 1000 clients to grow their businesses.
The selection committee noted it was impressed with Ms Anderson's attitude, ability and ambition to develop her business to its level of success.
