Exceptional Female Role Models - Donna Fraser

Born and bred in Croydon, Donna was a Great Britain international athlete. A former European Junior Champion 400m runner, who went on to win a silver and 6 bronze medals at senior level in European, Commonwealth and World championships between 1998-2009, represented TeamGB at 4 different Olympic games, including finishing 4th at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Donna retired from her running career in 2009 whilst battling Breast Cancer.

She is currently the first ever Equality, Diversity & Engagement Lead for UK Athletics.

She serves on the Honours Diversity Committee – a part of the government that assists the committee process in delivering an honours system which is representative of UK society.

Donna is also Vice Chair of The British Athletes Commission - the independent members’ association for elite athletes in over 40 sports, including the Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth sports.

#ExceptionalFemaleRoleModels

Can we start with some background?

I’m from Thornton Heath – I started athletics at junior school at the age of 8 years old, that was when my teachers identified I had some talent, and I’ve always been very grateful to them for that.

In 1991 (aged 18), I became European Junior Champion – back then that was a huge achievement for me as nobody even expected me to make it to the final.

I’ve always been underestimated, but I went on to become a Great Britain international athlete – a specialist 400m runner - although I sometimes say my actual specialist distance was 350m because I seemed to run out of energy in the last 50m of the big races!

I did win a silver and 6 bronze medals at senior level in European, Commonwealth and World championships between 1998-2009, plus I represented TeamGB at 4 different Olympic games, including finishing 4th at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

What life lessons have you learned?

Well, the 4th place is the absolute worst finishing position at the Olympics – it’s the first real loser in athletics. I was devastated and even though others were telling me I should be really proud, I felt I’d let people down. The bottom line for me was that I didn’t actually believe I could win a medal, despite the fantastic shape I was in and all the hard training I had done.

To be a successful person in life you need to believe in yourself – this was a big learning curve for me – I believe a high percentage of your success is your state of mind. You need a positive mindset, and to put together a plan, then you must work hard to achieve the things you want in life. Only you can change your mindset.

As an example, I remember being 12 years old and watching the Los Angeles Olympics on TV and setting myself a lifetime goal that I really wanted to compete at an Olympics – I achieved that, but I should have set myself the goal that I really wanted to win an Olympics, and built my mindset around that.

Obviously as a former athlete, the other thing I have learned is the importance of physical exercise and looking after your nutrition. I always compare the human body to a car, and I urge people to think about the quality of the fuel you put in it to achieve peak performance. I’m a big believer in daily exercise – even if it’s just a walk or a little run, plus the importance of eating 3 healthy meals every day and drinking at least one big bottle of water.

Especially in these tough lockdown times, I believe being physically fit contributes hugely to your mental well-being. I’ll do my exercise first thing in the morning, sometimes it’s even just a walk around the block to clear my head. I’ll also always put a call in to my parents every day. Then in the evening sometimes I’ll go out into the garden and talk to my plants!

What skills do you wish you had learned earlier in life?

The importance of self-reflection and goal setting.

I started doing this as an athlete by keeping and then reflecting on my training diaries – I would spend time in introspection thinking about what I did well vs what I didn’t do so well. Trying to discover the lessons I could learn.

At the end of every season I would sit down with my coach and analyse the season I’d just finished - what I did and didn’t achieve – this would give us the structure to create our goals for the next year. This can also be transferred to women in their business careers though – the importance of writing a journal, and re-reading this to really understand the emotions you were feeling at the time, the emotional intelligence piece is so important. You need to keep working to understand yourself better, you can then use this to learn from your past experiences.

I use journaling now on a daily basis, I do it when I go to bed – I spend time self-reflecting – I’ll think about how my day went, how could that meeting have gone better, how were my relationships with other people. My goal is to figure out how I can be just a bit better tomorrow.

I also start every day by putting together a To Do list – and I must have a highlighter pen with me at all times! It’s a really visual reminder that as I highlight each thing I’ve done, I can see myself achieving, and that motivates me throughout my day.

Don’t limit yourself with whatever goals and targets you set - the sky really is the limit.

How important have mentors and sponsors been to you?

Huge! My first mentor was my sister, she was always there to encourage me. I also now have an external mentor from the business world who is able to discuss things with me from a non-athletics perspective.

I’m a big believer in the importance of having people talk about you positively when you aren’t in the room.

Nowadays I also take the time to mentor young women, and give back the benefit of my experience.

Have visible role models been important to you?

Definitely - over recent months we have been hearing much more about ‘You have to see it, to be it’.

When I was a youngster we didn’t have social media, but obviously that’s a huge thing now – so I believe it’s important to have positive role models that you can follow on social media, and to ask what is it that is attracting you to a role model? Is this something that will help you on your life’s journey, and not have a negative impact on you?

It’s important that young people realise very few millionaires were born millionaires, usually they had to work pretty hard to get to that point. It’s those stories that we need to hear, there is a journey that everyone has taken.

I think social media can be a great platform to showcase positivity and it can be used to inspire others, but it can have another side which can become quite negative. This is where education is important, I even believe this should be looked at as part of the school curriculum.

What have you learned regarding overcoming challenges in life?

Again for me this goes back to goal setting – you can use vision boards or whatever you need to in order to be able to really clearly understand where you want to be, what is your journey – then understand all the stepping stones that you need to take to get you through whatever barriers you are facing.

Keep positive, keep believing in yourself, know your capabilities, keep telling yourself ‘I can get through this’. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t capable of doing something.

As an example, I had a really bad achilles problem stretching back to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which I managed all the way through to Sydney four years later. I then ended up going through a period of intense treatment on the torn tendon and had 2 operations in order to reach my next goal - which was Athens and becoming a three-Games Olympian.

The recuperation was awful, with tiring and tedious rehab work and physio appointments in the exercise pool and gym. I was always in pain and coping with that was such a challenge. I just kept wishing for that moment when I could put my foot down and not feel any pain - it was something I thought about every day.

Staying motivated became a real challenge, then one day I had a conversation with myself and embraced the situation, and I changed my thinking to ‘control the controllable’.

Once I took every day as it came and did all I could to get back with a positive attitude, it was a breath of fresh air both mentally and physically for me. I was determined to prove my critics wrong, that I wasn’t done.

I not only made TeamGB for Athens but I reached the 400m semi-finals and came very close to another medal in the 4x400m relay, finishing fourth again.

When I battled breast cancer, it was horrendous, it was shocking – but I spent a lot of time in self-reflection thinking ‘What is the life you want to live?’ and then this moved on to ‘What value do you want to add to your family and circle of friends?’

I would spend time turning these softer goals into stepping stones and reflecting on how I was doing on my journey and when did I need to correct myself. Equally, don’t be too hard on yourself when you do slip up, just recognise the areas you need to improve on. Set yourself SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals, and understand who is going to support you on that journey – realise that sometimes you can’t do it all on your own.

This was a huge turning point for me, and it also taught me to not waste any minute of the day. You’ve only got one life and you’ve got to live it.

What does success mean to you?

I now do a lot of talks to both schools and corporates. Whatever I am talking about at the time – whether it’s breast cancer or diversity, equality and inclusion – success to me is that one person in my audience goes away and takes an action based on listening to me.

That might be somebody checking themselves regarding cancer, or maybe somebody starts to think differently about equality or to recognise their bias a little more and commits to treat people in another way.

Likewise at schools, I’m looking to connect with whatever their talent might be and to encourage them to follow their path – so somebody might not be that sporty, but maybe they are brilliant at maths – I’m looking to identify everybody’s individual talents and draw those out.

For me, success is about the positive impact I can have on any individual.