Siobhan Strike

Siobhan is a senior lecturer at Roehampton University. In her professional life she is an exceptional role model to her students, but I would like to nominate her for what she has achieved outside of her professional life. Siobhan has been a truly inspirational figure for many mums / women in our community. 18 months ago she encouraged a number of middle aged mums to start a small running group. To begin with the majority could not run more than 400m. Siobhan was so enthusiastic and motivational, she slowly built up the confidence of the group and within weeks we were running a couple of times a week and set ourselves a goal to run 5K for the race for life. As our confidence grew so did the size of the group. Friends of friends came along and Siobhan was amazing in her ability to motivate the new runners but also push the more able to achieve their best. In June last year over 30 of us ran the 5k Race for Life in Richmond. It was a truly amazing day and we were all so proud and amazed at how far we had come and how much our confidence levels had soared. The group has continued to grow. Siobhan has since encouraged some of the runners to run 10k for charity and has also recently set up a group to train for a triathlon, which they completed in May of this year. Siobhan is responsible for encouraging women to start exercising and feeling better about themselves, realising that you can do anything you set your sights on.