LEAD magazine recently interviewed Syreeta Brown winner of the Black British Business Award. In the article, she discussed her career progression, what the award meant to her and her role on Advanced Boardroom Excellence's Panel of Influential Women.
Below is an excerpt from the article.
You are a Board Trustee for Access All Areas and that you sit on the Panel of Influential Women run by the Advanced Boardroom Excellence Group. Tell us about those and why are you involved?
Access All Areas (AAA) is a Performing Arts theatre company for Learning Disabled Artists. It is a cause close to my heart as my daughter, Chloe was diagnosed with Autism at three years old. She is now 10 and early intervention has been key in helping me to understand the possibilities and potential for her especially seeing how much she has developed with support. The theatre group is full of amazing people both in the management team and the artists and performers who show what can be achieved with belief and purpose. As well as creating immersive theatre productions through its performance company, AAA provides artist development to 12 artists, working with organisations such as Battersea Arts Centre, Lyric Hammersmith, Soho Theatre, the Live Art Development Agency and London Theatre Consortium; it has an industry-first partnership with agency Simon & How to represent seven professional actors with learning disabilities and it delivers the Performance Making Diploma at the Central School of Speech and Drama. It also runs a range of exciting and innovative projects for people with a broad range of learning disabilities and trains organisations in best practice skills of working with people with learning disabilities and autism.
Since 2015, the company has won the Guardian University Award for Student Diversity and Widening participation, nominated for 2018 National Diversity Awards and was a Finalist in the National Learning and Disability Awards in 2017 and the Living Wage Awards in 2018. In 2017, Access All Areas was awarded National Portfolio organisation by Arts Council England. I use my professional experience to guide the organisation in its management of people as well as improve the overall business and financial performance.
Advanced Boardroom Excellence is focused on individual and collective director effectiveness. It specialises in board effectiveness, and supporting Chairmen, CEOs and Directors. It has a significant research practice to ensure they ‘know’ what excellent looks like in the current context. I am honoured to be a part of the panel of influential women which shines a light on top business women and female leaders in their field. Through this panel, there are opportunities to provide support and be a source of expertise in the area of senior leadership effectiveness.
