What’s your word for 2020? How would you sum up the year?

‘Unprecedented’, ‘the new normal ‘, ‘the curve’, ‘zoom-bombing’ ,‘pivot’ words that became part of the English language in 2020. As a modern language graduate, I find language and words fascinating! If the most overused word was ‘Unprecedented’ and we would all be millionaires for the number of times the phrase ‘the new normal’ was used, my favourite was a term my friend used to describe 2020 ‘an Orwellian nightmare’.

1st December 2020 is definitely a day to be thankful as I have been judged as Northern Ireland Virtual Assistant (VA) of the Year 2020 by the UK VA Awards Body!

I started my business VirtuAli Admin Solutions in 2015 and its been a very tough learning curve but I never regret the decision of taking the leap to self employment and to being able to support business owners all over the world virtually since that time.

On 19th January 2018, I spoke at the joint Women in Business/Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council Female Bootcamp for Entrepreneurs at Lagan Valley Civic Centre. Today on International Women’s Day I attended an event to celebrate local businesswomen in the area and it was such a pleasure to talk to people whom I had met on the 19th and hear how their entrepreneurial journeys are progressing. As Carmel McKinney, OBE and Samara Prentice from Evolve by Samara stated ‘Empowered Women, Empower other Women’

On New Year’s Day, I swam across this bay in Lanzarote and let me tell you the Atlantic Ocean is baltic in January wherever you are! but so what you may think? What you don’t know is 1 ½ years ago I joined my local swim club to learn how to do the front crawl and it has taken me that amount of time and getting up at 05:30 twice a week to actually learn the skills and build up the confidence to swim in any expanse of water past my comfort zone.

Women in Business NI

Video created by Samantha Robb for Women in Business NI

Delighted to be announced winner of Power 4 end of traineeship ‘Dragons Den’ 2-minute pitch event sponsored by Ulster Bank Belfast. It has made a massive difference to me from a kudos, confidence and financial point of view.

Check out Women in Business NI programmes page for future pitching competitions.