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Fiona Mayer
My name is Fiona but people call me “Fi”. I’m 52, married, have 2 kids, 3 grandchildren and a multitude of laugh lines. Born in London, England, schooled in Canada, my career kicked off working for a stock broking firm located right by the Monument in London. The Monument commemorates the spot where the Great Fire started in 1666, an area that is full of ghosts, mysteries and opportunity. (Fortunately I found more of the opportunities than I did the ghosts but if you ask nicely, I’m happy to tell you a few supernatural yarns).
After completing my Stock Exchange Practice exams, I had the choice of going into sales, research & analysis or computing. I toyed with sales and running round the SE yelling “Buy, Sell” but the IT route offered more diversity and challenge. Progress was swift from trainee to analyst/programmer with a hefty dose of systems and business analysis thrown in. To complement those skills, I also trained in Data Communications and Networking which meant I spent about as much time under the desk cabling as I did working on top of it in rapid application development.
The stockbroker Scrimgeour Vickers was swallowed up by Citicorp in the late 80s with changes in UK financial regulations. We moved across the river to London Bridge to a new building called Cottons. As Team leader I was responsible for developing front & back office systems, contingency, strategic planning, rolling out new networks, operating systems and providing many levels of support to our expanded company. Some poor decisions by management combined with the Stock Market Crash of 1989 and Citicorp Scrimgeour Vickers was dissolved. I ended up working for Citibank (later Citigroup) as PC Development Manager; Resident Vice-President of European Information Services. About that time I also completed my Diploma in Advanced Psychotherapy & Therapeutic Hypnosis, a pet interest of mine. A few years later I went freelance as a consultant for various financial institutions in the city, including Citigroup, and managed to fit a move back to Canada in there somewhere.
As the years wore on, technology advanced tremendously and I found another outlet for my creativity in web and graphic design. I built my first site for my son who was a DJ in London and created his event flyers. I then developed an intranet for another client and built in a global reporting system. From there it blossomed!
As an interesting side note, since 9/11 I have had cancer four times, all primaries. Never having smoked, always a follower of health & fitness, it has been quite an unusual ride. Events culminated in 2007 when I traded my larynx for my life. I’m positive I got the best end of the deal and since then have happily added more laugh lines just to prove the point. ; )