International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. As GEC PR approaches its fifth anniversary, Company Director Fiona Anderson reflects on five female-focused achievements and learnings from running a travel and lifestyle consultancy over the last five years:
- A key take-away over the last five years has been the ability to pick and choose great clients to work with. I am so proud that our client roster includes organisations and brands that explicitly champion women leading in the workplace, as well as investing in female empowerment through charitable or social projects.
- Being a female business entrepreneur is much harder than I expected. However, like running a marathon (yep, done one of those), no pain no gain! Running a business is a real lesson in resilience – particularly throughout a pandemic!
- Relationships are so integral to everything a PR agency does, and the strength of these connections were really tested when non-essential travel ceased throughout the pandemic. Our clients and our media and content creator contacts continued to work with us, even when no-one was allowed on a plane. The pandemic was such a shock for us all that showing our softer empathetic side in the workplace became much more acceptable, allowing many men and women to bring their whole selves to work, often while working from home. I think this time has helped solidify these relationships and make them more authentic.
- I take my visibility as a business owner very seriously as I feel a responsibility to show the world that Black British women can and do run successful businesses that work with leading global brands.
- My business partner Sarah and I hope that one of our legacies is that of inspiring more young women to follow in our footsteps and run their own successful businesses one day. For that reason, we take our roles as mentors and providers of work experience to underrepresented women very seriously.
ENDS