Joining HI, Leaving HI, Joining HI!

Last month I re-joined Her Invitation - The Female Empowerment Company - as a self employed facilitator of the workshop Increase your Power and Influence, a two day programme designed to break behaviours and habits that are potentially holding women back.

Lots of people have been asking me why I have come back, which begs the question why did I leave, which for me means I need to explain why I joined in the first place! So here it is...

My whole career has been in Facilities Management and over a long period of time I started to notice the different ways that women behave in certain situations compared to the men. In fact I started to notice that I wasn’t necessarily being true to myself - maybe not getting my point across in meetings, not being taken as seriously as I felt I should be...just niggling feelings that things weren’t as equal as I had previously believed them to be (we call this the 18 - 30 realisation).

Back in 2014, I was working for a large FM organisation and a Special Interest Group was created specifically to focus on Women in the organisation. Invitations to apply for committee were sent out and I was so excited - I sent mine in and before you know it I was Deputy Chair!!

Roll on to our launch event in London and the speaker was no other than Lynette Allen, Creator of Her Invitation - she took to the stage and what she was saying resonated with me so much I couldn’t believe it - I recognised in myself and others some of the things we would go on to talk about in workshops with delegates, like the feeling of being a fraud, not really good enough - or not being noticed and passed over for promotion. The room was full of women nodding furiously at what she had to say (not least of all my co-colleague and dear friend Sarah Bond!).

If any of you know Lynette, she often refers to ‘the day that changed her life’ it was the second time I had met her and she was hosting a film viewing and was to facilitate a discussion afterwards. The film was called Miss Representation and dives into the gender messages that boys, girls, women and men receive through our media channels. It is a very moving film and when I say Lynette was to facilitate the discussion, she was actually rendered speechless by the content!

This was the day Lynette decided to licence her workshop to other people as she could never reach enough women on her own, so it was a no-brainer for me when she invited people to join her team, I did so readily in January 2015.

I loved the training, branding, the support network; it allowed me to set up my Ltd Company Sirius Business and to expand to not only delivering HI but other training as well.

The first time I delivered a workshop, I had this amazing sense of calm - a real satisfaction that changes were happening in the room, they may have been tiny changes but I was helping to make a difference.

Last year, personal tragedy (and I do not use the word lightly) meant I retreated, not only from my work but in lots of ways, from friends and family - I effectively went into hiding without really explaining why to anyone.

I knew I was not in a good place to facilitate those changes or to support anyone going through the sorts of realisations that delegates have on these workshops so I took time out to grieve and to heal. I didn’t know I would go back to HI, in fact I gave a lot of my kit away - things like commitment beads and CPD certificates we give to delegates on completion of the course.

However, I decided to draw a line under 2016 (and I know I am not alone in that!) I didn’t want what had happened to define who I am - I have a lot to give and so I started to re-connect with the world.

On 16th December an old acquaintance asked me what I ‘do’ and I found myself talking about HI - the very next day I reached out to Lynette and her response was simply ‘ I am here, we are here’ - the following conversation was easy and by 2nd January I was back!

I have been so happy to reconnect with all the lovely content, I took out the book I ask delegates to write in and was humbled by the words written there about the content and about me. I am happy and excited to be back, we have a brand new look website www.herinvitation.com and I have dates for both parts of the workshop booked for April in Central London - you can find out more here https://tinyurl.com/j4bf72t

My e-mail address is

if you would like to know more about me or Her Invitation, please do get in touch.