A retired teacher from Ilkley has been named as one of LinkedIn’s most powerful women.

Josie Whitehead, 71, beat off 11 million other women to clinch the social networking title, despite not being social media savvy.

Josie doesn’t Twitter and only dabbles with Facebook to get her poems noticed. She created her own website so children at the primary school where she volunteers can access the poems she creates.

Josie, who taught secretarial studies all over the world, has penned more than 1,000 poems for children which can be viewed at josiespoems.weeden.co.uk.

“I was not known at all to the world except for the children in the class where I made the website,” she said.

Through LinkedIn Josie has become somewhat of a global phenomenon. “I put my name and profile on and people have seen this and I am absolutely amazed. My mail box has been inundated,” Josie said.