Tracey has over 30 years’ experience in the financial services industry. She worked for Aviva and Aon both global insurance companies. During this time, she led large teams across the North of England, providing risk transfer solutions and service to clients across a whole range of industries and business.
Tracey prides herself on always being her authentic self, and has a genuine care and passion for helping and supporting others. Tracey continues to offer mentoring to ex colleagues in the industry.
More recently after semi retiring from Aon, Tracey has decided to do something completely different and has set up a celebrant business, providing ceremonies for wedding, funerals and naming’s.
During her working career Tracey was also a director of the local school wrap around care club and played an active role as a school governor. In addition to this, Tracey was actively involved in the local Chartered Insurance Institute for both Preston and Blackpool and Manchester, latterly holding the position of charities rep for the Manchester institute.
Tracey is mum to two girls and is passionate about girls having the confidence and belief in themselves to be the best they can be.
Nicola is 4th generation owner and director in her family construction business, where her role is all about people and culture. She places great value on employee wellbeing, naming this as the number one driver for a thriving culture and to this end she is a Trustee on the board for a leading UK mental health charity Mates in Mind.
Nicola moved into higher education as a mature student, taking her 2 young children to university lectures, “it was great fun, hard, but equally rewarding, and I loved rubbing shoulders with the youngsters, as I was regarded as a geriatric student at 30, which was hilarious. I proved to myself if there is a will there is a way…” After graduating she entered the family business, purely by accident and never looked back working from the ground up, moving around the business as her skill-set grew.
Nicola was the first female to be appointed to the Seddon board in an industry still dominated by males. “I have always been surrounded by men, with a father, 2 brothers, husband and 2 sons, and I work in a male environment too, but our sector is changing and being part of Girls Out Loud is very fulfilling. In my working life I have wanted very much to retain my femininity, that is what makes me, me… but it can be challenged in this industry and I want to be able to help young women navigate this world through development and opportunity”.
Kate is a Diversity and Inclusion Consultant for Pinsent Masons LLP. She advises these businesses, and their clients, across the full range of wellbeing, culture and inclusion topics.
Kate’s passion is for creating great workplaces that allow talent to thrive. She has a flair for culture change and helping leaders to learn how to start conversations around complex workplace issues.
Kate is passionate about supporting businesses to attract and retain the best talent, and to cultivate the skills needed to serve their clients and communities. Known for managing complex issues with sensitivity and discretion, Kate is described as “very knowledgeable with a great understanding of clients’ businesses”.
An employment lawyer by background Kate is an experienced advocate, she represented her clients in Employment Tribunals across England, Scotland and Wales across a full range of sensitive discrimination and equality issues.
Kate first became aware of the work of GOL back in 2008 and followed our work for more than 10 years before signing up to be a Big Sister herself! The delay in engaging was down to time commitments but since she has stepped up, she has been pleasantly surprised by how manageable the role is.
Kate was inspired to get involved by her own experiences of raising girls. She says: “I have seen first-hand how difficult it is for girls to grow up in Britain today, with the complexity of the online world throwing up challenges that we never even dreamt of as teens. I also see the advantages that my own children get from having role models in their lives, with women willing to listen to them and fight their corner. The work of GOL is more relevant today than ever before, and it is essential that those of us who can step forward and mentor young women who might otherwise be lost within the system, do so now.”
After a corporate career at the highest levels, Ellie recently struck out to fulfil her dream of running her own portfolio business– Ellie Doohan & Associates. Through Ellie Doohan & Associates, she provides Executive and Leadership Coaching and interim senior legal support.
The foundation of Ellie’s business comes from her 17-year career at Asda and Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer. Ellie was on the Executive board of Asda for many years and then more recently was responsible for launching a global compliance and ethics programme across Wal-Mart’s operations in Europe, Africa and Canada. With a team of over 250 people across 3 continents, as you would expect, Ellie has got great leadership and coaching skills and understands cultural nuance well. She has worked with many of the retail legends and has superb business as well as legal acumen.
Passionate about development, Ellie also helped build Asda’s reputation as a people-led business with a strong coaching culture. She was voted an Everywoman Retail Ambassador, was one of the founder members of Asda’s diversity steering group and was instrumental in starting the relationship between Girls Out Loud and Asda.
Ellie grew up in Stockport and went to Harrytown High School and Aquinas College. Although she now lives in central London. We will be tapping into Ellie’s connections to help us develop our corporate relationships and enable us to bring Girls Out Loud to even more schools.
We are delighted to have Ellie’s support.
Rebecca is passionate about female empowerment and gender diversity and believes that those in privileged positions have a responsibility to make a difference. As a child, she attended an all girls grammar school on an assisted place for a good education, which left her feeling like the poor kid in the corner on free dinners. This did however give her a sense of aspiration; she knew what she didn’t want and exactly what she did!
From here, Rebecca felt university wasn’t for her and started her career as a tax junior in Bury on £60 per week. She has since worked her way to Tax Partner at Crowe U.K LLP. As a qualified Chartered Tax Adviser, Rebecca speaks regularly at in-house seminars and contributes to the firms’ briefings and publications.
Her motto is ‘don’t wait to be asked – drive your own career and create your own opportunities’. She believes that self belief is everything and sometimes we all need a little help to recognise how good we actually are, which is one of her reasons for becoming an Ambassador and Big Sister for Girls Out Loud. She is keen to help girls that have not had the same advantages in life as others, and help them discover the opportunities out there.
Rebecca has been married for 21 years and takes each day as it comes – we are delighted to welcome her on board!
Sue has spent the past 36 years working in social care with families, women and children in a variety of settings including criminal justice, child protection and residential therapeutic care.
Alongside her role at Girls Out Loud she maintains involvement in a charity in Nepal for women and children, in particular she is sponsoring a women in to work programme in Nepal, is on the board of www.birdhousefund.org a regional charity supporting vulnerable women and also runs a private therapeutic practice in Bolton.
Sue’s knowledge of working with vulnerable teenage girls is invaluable to Girls Out Loud. Her advice, training and support around our Child Protection strategy, Big Sister training and future growth is essential.
We currently have vacancies on our Board for women of influence in politics, internet entrepreneurship and corporate fund raising. If you would like to help us grow Girls Out Loud to become the number one organisation inspiring teenage girls to greatness in the UK, please get in touch with our Founder Jane Kenyon today for an initial chat.