Faye Smith
Faye is proud to be born and bred in Sheffield. Her year at Brantwood aged 10 was the happiest of her school career!
She endured the rest on the back of being good at art, english, coming up with ideas and talking (a lot!). Science, music and tennis all defeated her, so she left school torn between archaeology or fashion design. No-one told her, her perfect career was marketing, so she was working ten years before she realised it!
She accidentally did a degree in Town Planning, since which time she has notched up no less than 15 jobs in four distinctly different careers in all three sectors, public, private and voluntary: retail management, training, business services and sales and marketing. Along the way she's gained vital qualifications like bra fitter, job club leader, business counsellor and image consultant. She's also been headhunted and promoted a few times, made redundant, taken severance, had a career break, volunteered a lot and brings up her children single-handedly.
Faye has interviewed hundreds of people in her time, particularly while heading Europe's first retail academy at Meadowhall, recruiting for the shopping centre's opening- so she can justifiably claim to be something of an expert in what employers and universities are looking for in school leavers. She's loved taking this message into Sheffield schools for nearly twenty years now, training over a thousand young people each year in confidence, image, employability and marketing themselves. Last year she finally realised her dream of launching her own freelance marketing and training consultancy, "Keep your Fork".
When she isn't helping students develop more confidence or learn how to market themselves to the world, she helps charities, social enterprises and women business start ups find and keep customers and funders.
Her particular brand of fun, interactive training has been featured on national TV, newspapers and she is a regular on Radio Sheffield's Girltalk, Roney's Forum and Sunday faith show and Bigger at Breakfast.
She has worshipped at St Thomas' church for over 30 years and occasionally finds time to remember who her friends are, read and walk in the Peak.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela