Who or what inspires you in your life?

Originally published 20 August 2014

I write on an evening spent with my 77 year old mother in hospital where she’s recovering from a stroke. Yesterday when I visited she was furious. A nurse had said to her she might never get back the full use of her right arm. Which she might not. And tonight she has been so focused on exercising the arm to prove she will get it back that what yesterday was a glimmer of a grip is now tighter, stronger.

People often ask me what drives me. What drives me to be a woman holding a board position at one of the largest business advisors in the world. And as I sat with my mother tonight I realise how much I owe her and the other women in our family in my own journey to where I am today. Let me take it back through time.

My great grandmother was a store manager in the late 1890s. A business woman before her time. A working married woman. She had three strong proud daughters. Two had careers in banking in the 1920s and 1930s. Then came my mother and her sister. Both became the first generation in their families to go to university. But not the normal route. Both as mature students, clawing out the education they had the talent to make something of.

My mother, as her three young children grew, first going to adult education to get the equivalent of A levels. Then studying for a degree. And then as I headed off to university, doing her doctorate. A thirst for insight into ideas, influence and what informs the choices we make. And that thirst for (and challenge of) ideas has been the driver in our relationship. It can be a tough relationship where every idea I have is challenged, picked over. Nothing taken at face value. And yet in that challenge I can see I picked up the same determination I saw in my mother tonight. To show I can, I will. The same need to understand the ideas, the purpose. To push, question, hold out for the best and not settle.

I have many inspirations in my life. The women in my family have perhaps handed me the most powerful inspiration of all: to follow dreams and ideas, to pick oneself up when one falls and to not let barriers stand in your way.

Who or what inspires you in your life?