Socially Mobile wraps its arms around you

Not expecting to be accepted, Lynne Carstairs thought she’d made a mistake applying for a fully funded place on Socially Mobile. Instead, the programme has stretched and developed her in unexpected ways, providing new skills, an expanded network and optimism for the future. 

I found Socially Mobile through a former colleague and tentatively applied, with no real expectation, and promptly forgot about it.

When I got the email, some weeks later, telling me I was ‘in’, I panicked as along came my good friend, imposter syndrome.

Despite, or maybe because of, 26 years in local government comms, five before that in journalism, I feared I would be out of my depth, as well as old enough to be everyone’s mum. What if I couldn’t keep up, didn’t understand or was just plain not good enough? Or worse, maybe I’d be the first person to fail, and I’d never work in this town again…

But I’m here, on the other side, having graduated earlier this year, with distinction, and Socially Mobile feels like a team I’m really proud to call myself a member of.

Founders Sarah and Stephen Waddington are comms superstars with experience, flair, energy, and enthusiasm that you just want to soak up and take with you. Together with a fantastic and inspiring team of industry professionals and experts, they have created a training programme that genuinely wraps its arms around you and sends you out the other side a better, more creative, more confident individual.

“And they do it so that older participants like me, those with disabilities (also me), and many more colleagues across the profession who are notoriously under-represented, can take that little but meaningful step up on to that elusive level playing field.”

I am sure each cohort will say this, but I met some lovely people from all walks of life, with myriad stories to tell and experience in abundance. Each more than capable and with so much to offer, but not always, for many reasons, confident in that ability, or able to progress as they might want.

Socially Mobile from its very inception is set up to understand, reflect and challenge that, while nurturing talented people from across the UK who in our industry remain underrepresented.

The learning, the focus and the support are second to none as compared to any other training I have taken part in, and it lasts long after graduation. 

This training programme is unique, and so needed. It’s damn hard work, makes you want to tear your hair out at times, and will challenge most of what you thought you knew, whether longer in the tooth like me, or starting out in a comms career.

I have new professional contacts for life, a whole new team of colleagues, mentors and even friends to call on, and a genuinely renewed hope that, ‘even at my age’ the only barrier to future growth and success is my now (much quieter) imposter syndrome. I could not recommend it more.