A PARIS fashion director, a transgender racing driver and a mountaineer were just some of the high-achieving speakers who talked to Brighton pupils about their lives on Wednesday at Roedean School as part of International Women’s Day .
Lessons were paused for the day as a roll call of fascinating guests talked to students from the girls school as well as Peacehaven Community School, Dorothy Stringer, PACA, Blatchington Mill and King’s, about how to achieve your potential and go for your goals no matter what other people say.
Roedean has been a cradle of female achievement ever since it was founded by three sisters in 1885 to prepare young women to enter the newly-opened Cambridge colleges, Girton and Newnham. The independent school has produced a long list of high-profile alumnae include MP Layla Moran, pioneering nurse Dame Cicely Saunders, creator of the A to Z Phyllis Pearsall, and Ursula Graham Bower – an anthropologist who became a guerrilla warrior fighting against the Japanese invasion of Burma.
The pupils heard how Charlie Martin transitioned halfway through her career in motorsport and has blazed a trail both in her sport and in how she lived. Not only has she entered a sport that requires a lot of financial support, despite not having a wealthy background at all, she has also managed to grow her career and become a success as a trans woman in a male dominated world.
She said: “I never imagined I could be a racing driver as a woman, standing here today talking about my experiences. It was just a fantasy when I was young. In the eighties when I was growing up, trans gender people were not seen. If you did see trans people, it was likely to be a drag queen in a film. I knew from an early age what I felt but it wasn’t until I saw people like me on Youtube that I realised there was a community out there.
She added: “It wasn’t until 2012, well into my career, that I transitioned and I was terrified about the impact on my life so I walked away from the sport. A year later, with the support of friends, I went back into it. It was awkward but I felt their love and support and I started to believe in myself.” Her career has gone from strength to strength since then and she has become a familiar figure, for both her racing achievements and LGBTQI+ ambassador.
Fashion director and former pupil Kelly Chan spoke to pupils about how she broke into the glamorous world of fashion photography and creative direction, with clients including Hermes, Louboutin, Clarins, Ferragamo and Chanel.
The Paris-based artist encouraged pupils to follow their hearts when it comes to choosing a career, not listening to what others wanted for you, and talked about the importance of learning the business side of art too. “It’s great to love your art and be good at it but in my job you have to be able to pitch to clients and explain how your art helps them,” she said.
Dr Suzie Imber, an associate professor of planetary science, made high achieving look like standard procedure as the pupils heard how she scaled high-altitude mountains in her spare time when she wasn’t studying space weather. She is co-investigator on the x-ray spectrometer on a spacecraft currently heading for Mars and will use data from this to study the x-ray aurora recently discovered at Mercury.
Dr Imber has also written computer code to automatically identify mountains in South America and has subsequently discovered hundreds that have never been identified before.
Roedean deputy head Dr Ross Barrand said: “At this year’s festival, we were proud and delighted to welcome 20 speakers, all of whom are at the forefront of their careers. They spoke to pupils from across the city and we hope that they inspired them all to take advantage of opportunities as they arise and have the self belief to chase their dreams, as these women have.”
Categories: Roedean School
