Jayne #mixedmonday
I’m Jayne, I was born in London in 1966 and I spent the first six years of my life in North-West London with my birth parents. After the death of my birth parents and after a short period in care, I was transracially adopted by a white couple originally from Manchester and lived in a small white majority town in Hampshire. I was also separated from my birth siblings. After returning to London at 18 to study at University, I reconnected with my brother and sister. I lived and worked as a teacher in London where I met my husband Gary also a teacher, after a short time living in Reading we settled in Bristol where we’ve lived for 20 years until we moved recently to Claverham, a village 11 miles south of Bristol. I am a mother to two amazing young women, my eldest daughter is 23, lives in Bristol and recently completed a Psychology degree and my youngest daughter is 20 lives in London and attends drama school where she is training to be an actor and a singer.
I am a freelance executive career coach, facilitator and Co-Director of a coaching and training company called GSP Coaching Ltd with my husband Gary who is also a coach and trainer. I trained as a performance coach over 20 years ago following qualifications in counselling and hynotherapy. Fifteen years ago, I undertook a post-graduate diploma in Careers Guidance at UWE Bristol and worked in various part-time roles at UWE Bristol, including Diversity Programme Manager and Career Consultant/Coach for over 12 years. I am now involved in a variety of different work including coaching civil servants and other public sector leaders and professionals. I freelance two days a week for a social enterprise, Stay Nimble, a digital career development organisation which aims to make career coaching accessible to many. We provide career coaching to a range of individuals, plus I script and deliver podcasts, write content and blogs on a range of personal and career development topics. I deliver training and workshops to organisations on career-related topics on emotional intelligence, resilience and anti-racism.
How would you describe your ethnicity?
I typically describe myself as a black woman of mixed heritage, although I am increasingly just saying I am mixed-race. My birth father was Black Caribbean from Guyana and came over to the UK in 1950’s as part of the Windrush generation and my birth mother was London Irish and my grandparents arrived over in the UK from Wexford, Ireland in 1930’s.
Has your mixed-ness influenced your career in any way?
I think that being mixed race and living in a white majority town in Hampshire in the 70’s and 80’s where I experienced racism, quite overt at times and having no-one in my immediate family or community that looked like me, impacted significantly on my sense of belonging and mental health in my teenage years. My adoptive white parents had no understanding of how to bring up a black or mixed-race child, particularly one who had experienced trauma in childhood. Therefore, I was really drawn in my teens to research my black identity and black history by getting anything I could out of the library on the topic – I became a big fan of Malcolm X. When I got to sixth form, I knew I wanted to study psychology and I also became an avid reader of self-help books to help me manage some difficult emotions and low self-esteem and confidence. I may have studied a degree in Business studies initially but every subsequent course and CPD I have done has a psychological underpinning to it. I have used my knowledge of psychology, therapeutic approaches and learning/development to help others succeed in life and maintain positive mental health, particularly helping other women and people of colour to overcome barriers and discrimination in their careers.
