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DIRECTOR
JENNY SHERIDAN - TFN Director
 Ever since my childhood I
have had two driving forces: to live a useful life and to enjoy myself
and have fun. Gradually I've learnt to combine the two, so that they
complement each other rather than clashing. Our mother brought up my brother
and me to love food, France, cooking and gossip and to have a strong public
service ethos. Both our lives have always included voluntary work.
I have had what I believe
is called a portfolio career - I've done a lot of different things. In
my early twenties I started a small business with a friend, organising
information for architects' offices. After a few years, my voluntary
literacy teaching in the evenings led to a fascination with language and
communication. I decided to train to be a speech and language therapist.
After graduating, I worked with people who had communication and cognitive
problems as a result of a stroke or a head injury.
After about 12 years of clinical
work, I moved to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists,
where I was the editor of the monthly professional magazine. I loved this
role, but it was difficult to combine its pressures and deadlines with
a busy personal life. When my much-loved uncle became seriously ill and
died, I realised I wanted to have more time for myself and for other people
and activities in my life. I took several months off before taking a part-time
job doing public and patient involvement for an NHS primary care trust.
Finding I didn't have the patience for this slow and gradual work, I
left it in 2005 and now I seem to have stopped doing
paid work, apart from facilitating an Action Learning group for health
service managers.
In my twenties I inherited
some money and with it some guilt, which I dealt with by putting some
of the money into a grant-giving charitable trust with four trustees.
The trust supports a range of charities in this country and overseas,
focusing particularly on those that may have difficulty finding funds
elsewhere. In my trustee role I read an article a few years ago by Fred
Mulder in the newsletter of the Association of Charitable Foundations.
He described The Funding Network, newly created, and I went along to a
meeting and was hooked. TFN fulfils both my needs: it is an effective
way of trying to make the world a fairer and better place, and it makes
giving money away a lot of fun.
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