I often speak at school/college career events and mentor around how you can achieve your career ambitions and goals without going to university – even if you’ve got a young family, or other caring responsibilities. My career route hasn’t been traditional, I opted to start a family instead of going to University at 18.
I left school at 16 and joined a Youth Training Scheme (YTS), studying a ‘BTEC in Business and Finance’. After completing this, I opted to work in my family business whilst I looked after my little one and attended night college. For the next three years I learned on the job and helped manage the accounts, sales, HR, procurement and purchasing, whilst learning how to manufacture UPVC windows and create stained glass windows. After we sold the business in 1998; I moved to insurance with David Miller Insurance Brokers and became Cert CII qualified.
I left insurance in 2001, to work for a family-run manufacturing business where I managed the back-office function and teams. They really invested in upskilling me to senior management level through training and development. It’s there I realised that I loved the ‘skills’ side of things, and the difference that can be made to somebody's life – I realised that’s what I wanted to do, help people! Once I knew what I wanted to do long-term, I began to work for the North Lancs Training Group in 2003, and over the next seven years progressed from Training Assessor to Team Manager, managing a team of 30 and delivering training in admin/leadership/management.
I left in 2009, to work for various companies, including Business Link North West and the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, creating and delivering Business Support focusing on people, leadership and innovation. It was in 2014 that I joined our Business Growth Hub, and I've been here ever since. I joined as Executive & Workforce Development Manager, setting up a pilot leadership and management programme in a two-person team. The success of this pilot led to this being included as a main service in 2015 and added ‘workforce development’ into our offer. Over the next three years the team grew to 15 and I later became Head of People, Skills & Talent for the Hub.
By progressing, I was able to look after the Executive Development, Workforce Development, BGH Mentoring Programme and the creation/delivery of our successful ‘Be the Business’ national contract, where I worked with business growth hubs across England managing a national team – that was a huge learning curve for me.
By 2020, I was also managing the hugely successful ESF ‘Skills for Growth Programme’ and Peer Networks Programme, and at its peak across all my ERDF and ESF contracts, a 70-strong team. It was a challenge during the pandemic to recruit, train and induct people virtually, but we pulled together across GC to make sure the contract achieved and delivered a much larger profit than forecasted.
When our ERDF/ESF programmes ended last year, I was ready for a new challenge, and I secured my current role as Head of Programmes and Initiatives within BGH. My remit is now much broader – working across the Hub on a diverse range of areas which includes contracts, compliance, dynamics development and supporting on bids.
I massively believe in what we do at GC. The thing I love most is our people. I've met some absolutely inspirational people and some wonderful characters. And it's not just colleagues, it's also our clients, partners, funders and stakeholders. It's all the people that I meet that keeps me at GC.
I hope my career journey shows what can be achieved and remember, if your career isn’t going the way you want it to, re-route it, traditional or not, and believe in yourself and skills and never stop learning - I’m still doing this today by completing my L7 Senior Leadership Apprenticeship!