Hello there.
My name’s Jacquelyn. Since I started working for the Service Design Festival 2017, I walk around with a little more glitz and glamour, a little more confidence in my super abilities. *paints nails emoji*.
That’s because I’m Sponsorship Superstar.
That means that I’m responsible for making sure that the Festival gets all the funding it needs to make sure that we can keep bringing you amazing events, over two weeks, in September, for the total sum of precisely £0.
It feels like quite a responsibility, if I’m honest. These things aren’t cheap to run, it turns out. Particularly when you’re expecting 50% more attendees this year than last year. But it’s a responsibility that I’m taking seriously and that I’ll definitely live up to. There’s no way that this festival isn’t going ahead. None. Zip. Nada.
About me
I once swallowed the metal ball in the board game of Mouse Trap. Yes, I’m a child of the 90s with a terrible story to tell.
More conventionally, and when I wasn’t eating board games, on graduating from Durham University in History and Spanish in 2010, I did a stint at a large management consultancy in the technology sector. Thankfully it was just a stint. Then I completed the On Purpose programme; a year leadership course in social enterprise for people typically working in for-profit companies.
I then co-founded my own company, Stemettes. Stemettes is an award-winning social enterprise, inspiring girls to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths (STEM) careers. One of our craziest moments - though, honestly, I can’t remember a time when we were anything but - was renting a 12 bedroom house in south London for 6 weeks over the summer of 2015, filling it with 150 girls, aged 11-22, and teaching them how to launch their own STEM startups. Then getting them funding. It was free. We cooked every single meal for them. As fire drill warden, trained in the art of fighting fires (not), one day when the alarm went off, I donned a fluorescent pink high-vis jacket and pranced out the door like a camp gentleman, followed, Pied Piper style, by up to 50 girls. It was mad but brilliant and I loved Stemettes very much.
Now I work for the Service Design Festival, with the wonderful Lior, while running my own business on the side. Salomé is a literary magazine for emerging female writers. We give anyone who identifies as female the platform, confidence and experience to get their work published in a publishing world which typically favours male writers.
We launched on 12th April this year, just a few weeks ago, to a packed room of 70 women interested in the emerging female literary space (that’s a thing). We were kept amused by comedy from the fantastic Ruby Darlings, who sung about vaginas and mooncups. How could that not be your idea of fun? Anyway. Salomé keeps me very busy and we’re always looking for help, so let me know if you’d like to be involved. If you’d like to check out the magazine, you can do so here, or view for free online here (though we really recommend buying because the artwork is beautiful and the pages smell of a newborn baby’s head).
With all this going on, and when I’m trying not to sniff copies of my magazine, I still have a couple of days a week free. I work on things I love and I love everything I choose to work on. My areas of expertise include:
But don’t let that distract you. Really I’m posting about how proud and excited I am to be working for the Service Design Festival. I’d not known too much about Service Design until meeting the founder, Lior. We met to discuss health issues at work and I ended up with a job. I’m canny like that. She and ‘Service Design Thinking’ and some serious Googling have taught me all I know about Service Design and I find it fascinating. Power to the people.
However, if you like the sound of me, the skills that I could bring to your business, or even just fancy a chat - about anything from tech, to gender equality, to social enterprise, to startups, to Orange is the New Black, then drop me a line. I’m open to offers of work, coffees, brain-picking and beers.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some Service Design companies to discuss sponsorship with.
P.s. If this could be you, drop us a line. We’re also recruiting so if you think you could contribute - and work side-by-side with me… eek - then get in touch also.
About Jacquelyn
She’s told you everything there is to know about her already, unless you’ve just skipped to the bottom of this page. But you can find out what she’s into via @jacsgud and know more about her business via @salome_lit (twitter) / @salome_lit (insta).
