E181 - Dame Stephanie Shirley: From child refugee to the Sunday Times rich list. What I’ve learned in 90 years

The High Performance Podcast

High Performance

Sports, Self-improvement, Mindset, Growth Mindset, Health & Fitness, Non-negotiables, Education, Life Lessons, High Performance

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dame Stephanie Shirley is a businesswoman, technology pioneer and philanthropist. Currently at the age of 89, Stephanie has had a long career championing women in the workplace and new forms of technology, including being part of the team that programmed Concorde’s black box flight recorder. After being born in Germany, Stephanie was brought over to the UK on the Kindertransport during the WWII and lived with foster parents for many years.

This turbulent childhood has shaped Stephanie’s life and career, teaching her how valuable life is and making her determined to do something good with every day. She discusses this with Jake and Damian in this open and honest conversation, along with the importance of being disruptive and innovative in business, whilst standing up for the people who need it, among much more.

In the beginning of her career, she used the pen name ‘Steve’ to ensure she was taken seriously by her male counterparts. She pioneered empowering women, disabled people in the workplace by allowing them to work from home, something unheard of in the 1960’s.

Stephanie shares stories of her childhood, her businesses and her personal life, in this moving and inspiring conversation.

If you would like a personally signed copy of either of Stephanie’s books (‘So To Speak’ or ‘Let It Go’), please email [email protected] – ALL proceeds go to Autistica.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My early life as an unaccompanied child refugee at the age of five in 1939, that really
0:09.6	has made me, has driven me, has defined me and in no way is that less powerful today
0:19.3	than it was 40 years ago, 50 years ago. I don't fritter my days away, I like to do something
0:26.2	meaningful with my life, with the time that I've got. What failure, of course, is when
0:31.6	you learn entrepreneurs are not made by their successes, we're made by the fact that we
0:37.8	can recover from our failures. Think always in terms of doing the right thing, not just
0:45.4	doing things right.
0:47.7	Welcome to the high performance podcast, Dame Vera Stephanie Shirley. Now you might be thinking
0:57.4	why didn't they start as they normally do on this podcast with Jake welcoming us to the show.
1:01.6	Well we decided that the words from Steve were so powerful that we had to start with them.
1:08.4	And you might be thinking already why is Jake referring to Dame Stephanie Shirley as Steve?
1:14.0	Well that's a key part of this story. This is the story of someone who arrived in the UK as an
1:20.9	immigrant, being persecuted during the Second World War, arriving under the kind of transport with
1:25.8	thousands of other young people, having to find a new life for herself, ending up going to
1:30.9	school and university here in the UK and then deciding that she wanted to work in tech at a time
1:35.8	when it just wasn't the thing that women did. She then decided that she wanted to set up a business
1:40.8	by women for women. And again this is in a time when if a woman came for a job interview,
1:46.6	the husband came with them. They didn't ask them at the interview, have you got a phone? They had to
1:50.7	ask them, have you got access to a phone? They had to get the husband's permission to pay the check
1:55.7	into the bank at the end of every month. And people had no idea this was going on. People don't
2:00.4	know that the first black boxes programmed for Concord were programmed by housewives at their
2:05.9	kitchen tables being employed by Steve. She then decided that as the business grew to be worth
	...

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