Lisa (she/her)

Lead Delivery Manager

As with many people my path to where I am now was long and filled with set-backs and some of the darker moments of my life.

I floated around in admin jobs for a couple of years before becoming a PA in 2005 for a Financial Advisor. It was there in 2008 I got my first taste of the dark side to employment - being used as a scapegoat for someone else's mistakes and my age and lack of understanding and my rights of the proper HR processes being used against me.

This was a really awful time in my very early career and it massively impacted on my confidence. I was very fortunate to have a close family friend who gave support and guidance during this time and who not only stood with me against the events that were happening, but who also took a chance on me to get me an interview within his own business.

Whilst he opened the door it was 100% down to me to sell myself.

I spent the next 5 years at that company working my way up from PA/Office Manager to work in near enough every department. It was very much 'we need this doing...Lisa will do it' and I loved it.

The company was sold and with it the place I adored to work at changed too much and I was headhunted.

I spent the next 6 months (almost to the day) setting up a new office and finding my feet when I was told on the last day of my probation that the business were essentially haemorrhaging money and I was being let go.

It was 6 years after my first horrendous experience, only now I had no job, the job market was a complete shambles and I'd been let down terribly by someone who had asked me to promise to not ditch the company for my old boss.

With a mortgage to pay and limited jobs on the market i ended up at the RAC doing basic admin, on 10k less and felt like I was having to start all over again.

I took a year to compose myself again, not wanting to rush into any old job after what I'd just been through.

After that I took on a couple more Business Operation/Office Manager roles and it was at the last of these the MD sat down with me and said my CV didn't truly reflect just what I was capable of, he felt I needed focus and suggested doing my PRINCE2. He wouldn't say it in so many words at the time, but I felt like he was saying I needed more than where I was working at that time.

I secured my PRINCE2 in the December 2017 and come February 2018 the same CEO who helped me out all those years ago in 2008 put me forward for my first Project Management role in tech.

Since then I got my Agile Practitioner accreditation, I've been sole PM in delivering multi-million pound wifi analytics projects for the likes of BT and Avanti, I've faced a pandemic where I was put on furlough for months unsure if my job was secure, I was mis-sold a position at a new company that I chose to walk away from at my 3 month probation (because its not just them assessing that YOU'RE right for the job but assessing the JOB is right for you ;) ) and for the last 14 months I’ve been at CAVU where I've gone from Delivery Manager joining in Nov 2022 to apply for and landing the promotion role of Lead Delivery Manager.

It took a LOT of steps to get here. It took a CV that I felt didn't truly represent my value, and a couple of exceptional CEOs/MDs to look past this and observe my capabilities and give me the push.

What do I love the most? That since 2018 I can finally be me. I’ve gone from stuffy corporate organisations that only believed that how you look matters to an industry where the smartest in the room are usually the nerdy ones who wear band or comic book tees.

You work with a complete mix of minds, and oftentimes in tech, cultures - during my time in the tech space I’ve worked with more eastern European team members than I would ever had the opportunity to meet/work with at the RAC or the FA office. Tech broadens your world in so many different ways.

Tech will always be the way forward and to put it simply, we need more women in the field. At the rate things are expanding there is so much to get involved with, whether that's writing the code or leading the teams through the delivery of that code. I just don't think girls are being encouraged from the right age that tech isn’t for boys...tech is for everyone.