My story started in my 20s when I was the general manager of a student bar and I had a moment one afternoon thinking ‘is this all there is?’. It was a pivotal moment when I chose to go to University as a mature student, to study ecology and conservation, which was where my journey into sustainability began.

Fast track to 2025 as Founder of Jackdaw, my digital strategy and sustainability company, these are the five essential things I have in my toolkit that I wouldn’t be without:

• Firstly a clear, strong, and analytical mind, and the ability to stay calm and balanced and avoid information overwhelm
• Secondly, is an abundant flow of creative direction, I have to be inspired to produce organic, engaging content
• Most important is number three: taking daily time in nature to defrag from all the digital work, essential for my mental health and creative flow
• Number four is taking a holistic world view, and a focus on networking and connecting, and empathic communication skills
• And lastly, number five is kindness and patience, supporting clients get through their digital transformation. One of my clients said I literally got her ‘out of tech hell’

But how did I get here, to running my own digital sustainability company? Read on for more to find out what inspired my journey.

It all started in my 30s with a final year project as part of my Masters of Research at the University of York, to build a website that promoted wildlife conservation in the Peruvian Amazon.

My dissertation was looking at deforestation rates and researching the impact of ecotourism on wildlife. For several months I sat in jungle lodges on my Dell Latitude laptop, a high spec one that had an apparently ‘ant proof’ screen, using FrontPage to build the website.

The days of Wordpress were far away, and I built offline, which was only possible when the generator was running. When I was ready to go live, I would go up the river in a canoe, to the local town and then upload to the internet in an internet cafe. On dial up. If there was power. This would take two days of journeying, one day there, and one day back, so everything took a really long time, and you had to be really determined.

Fast forward into my 40s and I was leading a more sedentary life, and I went freelance offering web design and digital marketing, and niched working with wildlife conservation projects. People called me a digital diva and I was building websites for wildlife conservation organisations in Peru, and Guatemala, and managing their social media platforms. I fell in love with the online space and became part of the digital transformation.

My most satisfying, and still current client to this day, is a Sea Turtle Conservation Project on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. It’s a dual language website, promoting a very worthy cause. If you’ve ever seen thousands of olive riddle hatchling turtles frantically dashing to get into the ocean after hatching, you’ll know how inspiring that is.

After seven years of Freelancing (they say it takes seven years to establish a business) I took the leap, and in 2020 I set up my own company Jackdaw offering digital strategy and sustainable business coaching, and I now support SMEs across the South West work towards digital sustainability.

My own digital transformation has happened over 20 years, since that first web design project in 2000, and I’m now committed to helping other organisations up their skills and improve their online presence, in a sustainable way.

I don’t want anyone to be left behind just because they don’t understand, or can’t keep up, with the digital transformation the world is undergoing. And I want to make sure they do it in a way that embeds sustainability into everything they do.

My mission is to help SMEs in the South West with sustainable digital transformation.