How it started…

In the year 2000 ago I made a decision that would change my life forever. As it often goes, trying to piece together the individual elements of any life-changing story shows just how much luck or fate is involved.

I caught an item on breakfast television about egg donation. To this day, how I managed to do that as a working mother of one-year old twins remains a mystery. I had an appointment with a physiotherapist for a painful back that day. Because I was early, lost in the building and had nothing else to do I decided to go to the ‘Fertility Unit’. I’ll never forget the surprised look when I walked in and said ‘Hi, how do I become an egg donor? I want to help.’

This set off a chain of events starting with my donation some months later, joining the NGDT charity as a volunteer after that. What motivated me as a donor and later with my involvement with the NGDT was helping people create their families.

My background is in project management, sales and marketing and I wanted to help build up the charity using these skills. Truth to be said, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a reproductive cell and a toenail under a microscope and any picture of me near medical equipment or cryotank is very staged. Luckily there are many hugely talented people who have these qualities and I’ve been honoured to be working with some of them.

Through my own experience as an egg donor, active involvement in the various national initiatives and being privileged to speak to many donor-conceived, donors and patients, I now have a fairly all-round understanding of the complex practical, legal, social, ethical and emotional issues to do with gamete donation.

A no-nonsense pragmatic approach combined with a direct ‘say it as it is’ attitude, allowed me to drive some changes needed on donor-conception issues on national level. My out of the box thinking is fuelled by a belief that pretty much everything is possible if you put enough energy behind it.

After being a volunteer for almost 9 years, 8 of these as Chair of the Trust, I was employed as Chief-Executive in 2012. I left the NGDT early in 2016 through a combination of pending funding cuts, changed personal circumstances and wanting to work in a different environment. In 2017 I set up as an independent advisor mainly supporting clinics with their donation programs.

They say “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” and that is exactly how I feel every day. And all this from watching an item on breakfast television and wanting to help as an egg donor.