That one time I met Dame Stephanie Shirley...

For those of you who have read my 47 Mondays blog about the 10 lessons I learned on the BP graduate scheme, you'll know what an inspiration Dame Stephanie Shirley has been to me and the very personal reasons why meeting her has been on my bucket list since I was 13.

Here are my notes from finally meeting this phenomenal woman in the flesh at the Harpers’ Bazaar Connecting Visionary Women event in London. Huge thanks to Kirsty Bashforth for making that dream a reality!

Photograph Credit: Sophia Evans/The Observer

“All that I am stems from when I was put on that train in Vienna in 1939” Dame Stephanie Shirley began,??“I am only alive because so long ago I was helped by generous strangers…So I decided to make mine a life that was worth saving.”

Watching Dame Stephanie speak on stage at the Harpers Bazaar connecting visionary women at work event - a day-long programme featuring some of Britain’s most inspiring female leaders in a series of empowering talks, panel discussions and workshops – I had to pinch myself. It was a life-long dream come true and I was totally transfixed.?

She spoke about her life and career, from tackling gender discrimination in the 1960s tech industry, to pioneering new work methods for women:?

 “I believe in the beauty of work when we do it properly and in humility.”
        

“Let me take you back to the early 1960’s, to get past the gender issues of the day, I set up my own high-tech software house – one of the first such start-ups in Britain. My company, called Freelance Programmers, couldn’t have started smaller. I recruited professionally qualified women who left the computer industry due to marriage or when their first child was expected and structured them into a home-working organisation. We pioneered a whole lot of new work methods, all kinds of flexible working and job shares. It was a social business. We measured success in terms of the number of women we employed and the type of women we employed. Unmarried mothers, breadwinners, disabled women. Of the first 300 staff, 297 were women.”?

"It’s one thing to have an idea for an enterprise, but to then make it happen requires extraordinary energy, self-belief and perseverance."
        

“Nobody expected much from women and I couldn’t accept that, so I started to challenge the conventions of the day. I was tired of being unable to do certain things – I couldn’t even open a company bank account without my husband’s permission! Following the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, she remembers “We were in the unusual position that we had to let the men in!"

Such was the male-dominated business world of the time, Dame Stephanie decided to change her name from Stephanie to the family nickname of Steve – “It meant I could get through the door and be shaking hands, before they even realised that ‘he’ was a ‘she’!” she laughed. “There was a pernicious covert pressure then, all those things that happen with sexism - your ideas weren’t listened to…Did you know that you can always tell ambitious women by the shape of our heads? They’re flat on top from being patted patronisingly all the time!”?

Dame Stephanie went on to share her two secrets of success:?

1)????Always surround yourself with first-rate people and people that you like, not people like you

2)????Choose your partner very carefully!?

Speaking of her motivation for her philanthropy, she mentioned her late son Giles – a profoundly autistic child who didn’t speak another word after the age of 2 and a half. “I was helped so much as a child by strangers. They got me out of Germany, fed me, educated me. What else could I possibly do but pass that on? I give not to the people that gave to me but to others.??

“People think philanthropy is just for wealthy people, but you too can be a philanthropist. You too can give time, money and skills. You too can enjoy the pleasure of giving,” she said. “Certainly, the more I give away, the richer my life seems to become.”        

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