I am very proud to have joined the Maggie’s Coventry Fundraising Board.
Maggie’s is building a new centre in the grounds of University Hospital Coventry, bringing free practical, emotional and psychological support to people with cancer, and to the people who love them, across the West Midlands.
That sentence tells you what Maggie’s does. But it does not quite explain why it matters.
Cancer has a way of making life feel both very immediate and completely unreal. There are the appointments, the treatment and the information you are trying to take in. Then there is everything around it: the people you are worried about, work, money, family, the small things you still have to remember when your head is already full.
Maggie’s offers a different kind of space alongside medical treatment. A place where people can walk in, speak to someone who understands, meet others who get it, or simply sit quietly for a while. There is no need to prove that you are coping brilliantly. There is no expectation to have the right words.
That feels important to me.
Most of my work is about business. I work with founders, leaders and teams who are trying to grow something, lead people well and make better decisions in the complicated bits. But I do not believe business sits separately from real life. The strongest businesses are built by people, and people do not leave the rest of their lives at the door when they arrive at work.
We talk a lot about resilience. Sometimes too much, if I am honest.
Resilience is not always pushing through. It is not pretending nothing is hard. It is having the right support around you when life changes shape. It is being able to ask a question, take a breath, say “I don’t know what to do next” and not feel like you have failed.
That is part of what I admire about Maggie’s. It understands that support does not have to be grand or complicated to matter. A conversation. A cup of tea. Expert advice. A room that does not feel clinical. Time with people who understand. Those things can make an enormous difference when everything else feels uncertain.
The Coventry centre is still being built, and the local fundraising campaign needs to raise money to build, equip and run it. That is a significant job. But it is also the sort of thing a community can do when enough people decide it matters.
I have joined the Fundraising Board because I want to help make that happen. I will bring what I can: commercial thinking, connections, energy, ideas and a willingness to get behind the work properly. I am also there to learn from people who have been committed to this cause for much longer than I have.
If you run a local business, lead a team, have a community around you, or simply care about what cancer support can look like beyond the hospital setting, I would encourage you to find out more about Maggie’s Coventry. Whether that is through fundraising, a partnership, making an introduction or sharing the campaign, it all helps move the centre closer to opening.
Nobody facing cancer should have to work it all out alone.
Help bring Maggie’s to Coventry. Find out more about the new centre, its fundraising campaign and ways to support it at Maggie’s Coventry.
