Entering the world of therapy

It took me a while to secure a graduate trainee post at a time when agencies weren’t truly diverse at a senior level from a race, sexuality or gender standpoint. I quickly became used to being the only black face in the room when agencies were mostly white spaces. Attending a school where my brother and I were the first black children to enrol strangely helped with this experience.

I have always worked at one of the top 30 creative agencies. I started in account management and ended up in project management, heading up departments at Fallon and Saatchi & Saatchi London. It was while I was at Saatchi that I decided to pursue a master’s in psychotherapy. I was wary of letting the agency know about my studies for fear that my position could be jeopardised if jobs were ever at risk at any point. It was a constant challenge to straddle both my course and the intensity of my role and this became even more difficult when I was promoted to operations director.

I qualified for my master’s degree last May after studying person-centred psychotherapy for six years. I resigned from Saatchi at the same time and joined the Oliver agency to lead their UK Operations team, but it was clear to me as soon as I joined that I was far away from the creative process and that it was the right time to leave the industry to become a full-time psychotherapist. I am currently a faculty therapist at The School of Life, an associate therapist at Therapy Harley Street and I also run Lqa therapy, my own private practice. 

‘It took me a while to secure a graduate trainee post at a time when agencies weren’t truly diverse at a senior level from a race, sexuality or gender standpoint’