As part of Rye Arts Festival, Dame Stephanie Shirley, the philanthropist and IT entrepreneur, came to speak about her life, career and charitable work.
Sadly the venue – the Methodist Church in Church Square – although holding a good audience, was not as full as the speaker deserved. If you were not there and feel the need of some inspiration in your life, you should have been.
From an inauspicious start as a little four year-old Jewish child arriving with her sister from Germany on the Kindertransport in 1939 and speaking almost no English, to multi-millionaire sounds like a fairy tale, and all told in a quiet a modest way that belied the hard work and effort that must have been needed.
A fairy tale, however, it definitely was not. On the way she had to battle against entrenched sexism and the widely-held view of the time that “the little woman” should be at home looking after her husband and children and not mixing it in a man’s world. Her answer was to start her own company employing only women (which she admits could not happen today under current equality rules) and all working from home, designing software solutions for the very early computers (that worked off reels of punched tape).
Despite the continuing patronising attitude of business men with whom she came into contact, (she altered her signature on letters from Stephanie to Steve to help get her through potential clients’ doors) the company went from strength to strength, at one point designing the black box flight recorder that went into Concorde.
All this while happened bringing up a severely autistic son. It was due to this experience that she decided, with the financial freedom that came with business success, that she must somehow try and provide a much better standard of care and also education for autistic children than her son, Giles, who sadly died, aged just 35, had ever been able to have. This has, in retirement, become her passion and to date she has given, or “invested”, as she prefers to call it, some £60 million to the cause into which she continues to throw her energy and time.
I had the opportunity to speak briefly to her afterwards and also obtained a copy of her book, which, typically, she modestly refers to as just a “memoir”. She signed it for me and, despite success, the signature still remains Steve Shirley.
Some memoir, some Dame.
Photo: Nick Chillingworth
Heidi Foster
I was at the talk and so glad I attended. I totally agree with John Minter. ‘Steve Shirley’ was inspirational as an individual, a woman and what she achieved in her life. She took on society’s prejudices, changed the work ethics which were not conducive to women and has brought about a new way of perception for autistic individuals.
Retirement is not in her vocabulary, now looking at setting up a centre where people with autism will be encouraged to look at polices for any changes in behaviour towards autism, what do they think needs to be done to be accepted in society and in work places.
Very thought provoking.