My greatest role model would be my grandmother.   She is the salt of the earth.    When my mum and Dad split up, my grandmother minded me.  She was like a magnet drawing people to her.  She was always supportive of her family.  We were a matriarchal Welsh clan.

 

My grandmother's qualities were resilience, compassion, stability and matriarchal strength, drawing the family around her.  I was always surrounded by strong women.

 

My mother is also a role model, since she'd left school early.   She went back to do her A levels and did teacher training.  She bounced back into the Civil Service.  A highly intelligent woman.
 
Her qualities: she was enabling, supportive, incredibly supportive, and charismatic.  I always felt that anything was possible.  I was encouraged to try things, always inspired by everything.

 

My metaphor is The Journey, always looking to see what ahead is exciting and challenging.  Also as much about letting go.   I use the analogy of the Elizabethan voyage, sailing  into the unknown, the unexpected, finding different peoples and cultures.  The turbulence of arriving.

 

 

Meeting my husband - we met in a pub when I was just 18!    We fell 'in lust' at first sight....love took a bit longer.   He saw me in a short skirt and fell in love with my legs...I saw his spiky hair and thought he looked a bit like Sting.    He is someone who both supports and grounds me.   A soul mate and damn sexy! The only man I'd travel to the ends of the earth for, which I quite often do when he is fishing in international competitions, in the most remote inaccessible places. 
 

 

Working in Kent County Council, setting up the first cabinet style governance, first public service board in the country, before the legislation putting in it in place.   I was surprised by how people would overcome the constraints of their own organisation to achieve the aims.  We were the first cabinet style governance board in the country.  My role was supporting leadership, supporting the Leaders' role.  I  was surprised to see how the competition between the Leaders could be overcome,  once we had established that we wanted to make a difference, to put something into the community, I was supporting visionary leadership, pushing their boundaries.

 

 

I was surprised to see a senior manager, a woman, present a different face in the office to the one I saw behind closed doors.   She asked me to draft a strategy, which I worked on over a week, fit for purpose improving leadership models in local government, a core structure and fluid delivery model, only to find it flung across my desk.  "We won't be needing this!"

Later in a meeting, she asked for the strategy, then presented it to the meeting, although I doubt that she even knew what was in it.  All sweetness and light.

 

People surprise me, not incidents.
 

My children are my female role models.  Fiercely independent.  Completely their own person.  My children are my future, bubbly, surprising and challenging, able to re-invent themselves.
 
Apart from this, Madonna and Joanna Lumley are very much their own person, able to re-invent themselves.   I'm also fascinated with Obama, I think what you get is the package, his family.  He appears to be genuine and empathic.  It's about ethics, living by ethics.
 
My current role model is Gillian Burgess, Vice President of Pfizer.  Her husband died of cancer but she was able to give her children a stable upbringing.  Although she travels internationally, she is still an amazing mother .
 
Actresses: Meryl Streep alongside Joanna Lumley - they have similar qualities - professional, hard working, reinvention, honesty, compassion, resilience and most importantly a sense of FUN!
 
Musical contributors: In addition to Madonna I would also add Annie Lennox.  I respect her international (peace/health) work - recognized recently by getting the Freedom of the City of London as a great advocate for the Red Cross, Oxfam and others.

 

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