Sarah Pinch, Managing Director of Pinch Point Communications, was a panelist at the Sunbelt Conference in Edinburgh discussing whether social capital can help level the playing field. Here she outlines why interventions designed to deliver social capital to disadvantaged groups to support them in their careers can help change lives.
It is my experience that whoever I meet, and wherever I meet them, what I see first is never the whole story.
Yesterday, I was in Edinburgh for the Sunbelt Conference at the invitation of Professor Dame Heather McGregor, a dear friend and mentor and the ex MD of Taylor Bennett Foundation, the executive search firm who founded the Taylor Bennett Foundation, which I chair.
I spoke on a panel with David Obstfeld, Associate Professor, College of Business and Economics, at California State University; Dr Sarah McDonald, lecturer in Education Futures at the University of South Australia; and Kayla Griffiths-Reynolds, Senior Performance Manager, Group Communications and Brand, HSBC.
I spoke about the Foundation’s interventions, which enable our young people to secure careers in public relations and communications. And we do this very successfully. 97% of our young people are still in employment, 78% are in PR and communications and 14% are in senior roles.
Young people at the Foundation are often the first in their family to go to university and the first to start on a career path. I know that feeling. I did not go to University straight from school, I did so later in life and I have a post graduate qualification in management. But I was the first to start on a career path; my dad left school at 14 and my mum at 16. My dad was a highly skilled electrician, all learnt on the job and my mum ran a nursery.
As we discussed at the Conference, building Social Capital, as academics refer to it, or being socially mobile as many of us would say; requires some kind of intervention from someone, at some point. For me I can trace that back to my maternal grandmother Hilda Stevens, my primary school teacher Mrs Howell, and Fiona Windrum who supervised my work experience at BBC Radio Devon when I was 15.
And I have been richly blessed by others who have continued to open doors and mentor and sponsor me; it is a lifetime’s work. The key learning I have taken is to give freely; and generosity feeds generosity. The help I have been given; I do truly try to pass on. It is why I am the chair of the Foundation; and why every week I take a call or jump on Teams or make an introduction to help and support someone else.
On stage yesterday I know what people saw. A white woman, with an expensive handbag, in a smart outfit, looking the picture of success – and perhaps of privilege. I am of course some and perhaps all of those things. But I am also a woman who has benefitted from Social Capital being built into my life, from those very first interventions from my grandmother, my school teacher and my first mentor. And I had a series of serious knocks; as a young woman working at the BBC in the early 90s. Building a strong sense of myself, supported so brilliantly by my grandma, enabled me to become stronger and more sure of my worth.
So, I hope by reading this you might consider looking out for someone you could help. Making an introduction. Sharing an opportunity. Offering to find someone a mentor or becoming a mentor. Suggesting someone for a job. Putting a name forward for a panel. If we don’t do this, it will continue to be jobs for the boys; so please intervene and provide the social capital that can change lives.