ATTIVO

The Gift: Dame Stephanie Shirley

Known as ‘Steve’, Dame Stephanie Shirley CH, explains how she views the ‘gift’ of a second life, after escaping Nazi persecution as a child.

“I arrived in London aged five on a Kindertransport rescue train from Vienna. It was 1939 and this felt, and still feels, like the gift of a second life. Indeed I have occasionally given my date of birth not as 1933 but rather 1939. It was such a traumatic change – new country, new language, new food, new culture, new family – that I later realised I could deal with any other changes in my life – indeed to welcome change. And that is useful in the digital world.

My childhood made me sensitive to hardship in ways that people who have enough, enough not to feel hungry anyway, find hard to envisage. I am a venture philanthropist using my time, money and skills to pinpoint problems, do feasibility studies and measure impact. That’s akin to how one runs a business.

I only give to the two things I know and care about – information technology (my professional discipline) and autism (my late son’s condition). So I get enormous pleasure from having something to get up for each morning. And being able to spend my life on worthwhile projects aimed to make the world a fairer place.

I remain engaged with the several not-for-profits I’ve set up – Autism at Kingwood (home-based long-term support in Reading), Prior’s Court (special school for autistic pupils with complex needs in Berkshire), Autistica (medical research charity), the Oxford Internet Institute (researching life online) and the Information Technologists’ Company which focuses on charity, education and fellowship in the City of London. That includes fundraising, speaking and helping however I can and I am acutely proud that all these are now sustainable – by which I mean managerially and financially independent.

“There is an element of needing to make my life that was saved a worthy one.”

Many wealthy people upgrade their quality of life but my husband and I sought to maintain family life with our autistic son, so our standard of living did not change much as I became wealthy. So I work at my philanthropy; and enjoy my active professionalism. To me, work is not just something you do when you’d rather be doing something else.

I believe that good genes and a pronounced work ethic are behind my drive. And there is an element of needing to make my life that was saved a worthy one. A need to justify my own survival.

People remember me for my successes but I’ve had many failures and it is resilience that distinguishes the entrepreneur. The big achievements have typically each taken me years. For example it took me 17 years to firmly establish my first charity, 11 years to take the company to co-ownership and 11 years to manage my own succession.

I aim to lead a spiritual life emphasising the non-material: art, music, nature, friendship and love. As to religion, after being born Jewish, educated in a Roman Catholic convent and brought up in the Anglican church, I have given up my search for a god or gods; and am an agnostic.

I’d like to give the gift of being able to walk in other people’s shoes. Then perhaps we can have peace in a world that is a fairer place.

So to Speak is an anthology of 30 speeches by Dame Stephanie Shirley, £25 (self published). It follows her memoir Let It Go, £9.99, Penguin.