From Athlete to Business Owner: The Resilient Journey of Claire Buckle

Prepare to be inspired as we sit down with Claire Buckle, an extraordinary woman who’s turned her struggles against discrimination into a positive force. A former GB Para-athlete and now an award-winning business owner, Claire shares the gripping tale of her journey, marked by her triumphant resolve against cerebral palsy and the harsh realities of bullying. She sheds light on her childhood, her love for sports and how she navigated through a male-dominated environment to an all-girls school, thus offering a unique perspective on the world she grew up in.

Today, she’s advocating for change through her workshops that address discrimination and her disability awareness app. Listen in as she passionately talks about her mission to inspire more young people to engage in sports and how her innovation won her the prestigious Inclusive Innovation Award.

Listen to Learn:
🎙️Claire's journey from para-athlete to entrepreneur
🎙️The power of resilience, determination, and self-belief
🎙️The importance of inclusivity and how we can contribute
🎙️How sport can be more inclusive

Listen here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1981646

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:38

The Northern Power Women podcast for your career and your life, no matter what business you're in. Welcome to the Northern Power Women podcast, where we spotlight the absolutely remarkable and inspiring individuals who use their power for good in the aim of reaching a more equal and diverse world, and this week it is I'm. I'm looking forward to this one because I'm chatting to the wonderful Claire Buckle, who won the 2023 inclusive innovation award at the Northern Power Women Awards back in March with Ability Consultancy, which is her consultancy. But Claire Claire's got such a story. She's a former GB Parathlete and a current award winning business owner. Claire, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. Hi. Hello there. Well, we were chatting just before we went. We press play, or press record, and so you grew up in Merseyside, didn't you? I thought it was Lancashire, but it was Merseyside and you grew up with cerebral palsy. Tell me about your school life, because you had two different journeys, didn't you? In school?

Speaker 2: 1:38

Yeah. So I have to be honest, growing up as a disabled person in mainstream schools is, at that time, was really hard and it was kind of unheard of. So I was always in the first and the only disabled student in like any of my schools. So I experienced bullying, I experienced discrimination. It probably helped that I kept actually moving schools as well. And then my secondary school.

Speaker 2: 2:22

I started off in a small private school that only accepted girls, probably five or six years and before I started so I had a year group of 15 of us and 13 were boys and there was actually me and this other girl who classed completely. We just didn't like each other and so I hung around with the boys quite a lot and I actually think that's actually where my love of cars, football, anything sporty, came in, because I just hung around with them and we spoke about football and we spoke about like all of all of like the formula one, like every one day was this big discussion and this other girl hated it and just was not and she hated it, no, and she made that time of actually my life very, very hard, but it's it was hard and it was a challenging time, but I think it's made me here I am today and if I haven't experienced the level of bullying that I had then, I wouldn't have actually been able to stand up and say, actually it's wrong, because it was quite intense every day.

Speaker 1: 4:04

So you went from this boys environment with a mean girl there and then you went into an all-girl place. What was that like?

Speaker 2: 4:12

I went into a year group of 96 girls and, yeah, it was a bit of a challenge.

Speaker 2: 4:23

So I turned up in trainers and had short hair and I was quite boyish looking and I was just like and I just hated it because everyone was concerned about like having smart shoes, having makeup, having long hair, doing the hair nicely, and I was like I have short hair and I wear trainers and I don't really care what I look like and I just, here is me and this is what I do, and and I just couldn't understand the concept that I didn't want to be like them and I just and it wasn't interested. You know, I was and I was more interested in trying to play football, which was at that time not and allowed in school because it isn't a girls sport at that age. So I was stopped from playing football. I was stopped doing everything that I liked and nobody knew about football. So my Mondays would just start with the radio on in my ears trying to block out everything about makeup and films and nights out that they'd all had and I was like just not interested.

Speaker 1: 5:41

And also block out you being new. And how do you think the world has improved for individuals with disabilities since those school days? Because they were just two totally completely different experiences from the, the more the male environment with the footy in there to then into your makeup suppose what feels like a mean girls kind of environment.

Speaker 2: 6:04

Yeah, but I have to be honest, out of that school, I have ended up with, I would say, two or three and amazing friends that have stayed with me the whole way through. One is actually a director in the business as well. So for her, you know it's, it's it's. You know I have, I have a 23 year relationship with her and it's just amazing and we speak all time and that's really good. So it has to work out actually that way.

Speaker 2: 6:44

But, yeah, I think schools now are very different. So the instead of having the box of if you are and if you are disabled, you have to be in a special school, that's gone out of and window. There is so much more support in schools. So I I had no help in school. What's, however, everyone now and they have the education and health care plans I didn't have one of those and everyone get that extra, extra support that they really need and it's just open the door to like and it's and it really helps because because actually now all youngsters say somebody and disabled in their school and that is really really key and it just puts and shows on the world that we have a place and we are capable and able to achieve, if given and the right environment.

Speaker 1: 8:04

And let's, let's fast forward now to 2020, 2012, shall I say to the, to the London Olympics and Paralympics. And I worked for London Olympics, or before the Olympics actually. So I worked for Low Cog. It was a dream for me to go and work for the Olympics, but there's a real shift. Wasn't there in that? And remember that during the whole preparation, it was really aligning the Olympics and the Paralympics. It was one game. It wasn't like the, the after four games. It was built with the same passion, with the same sort of real focus and highlighting how much do you think that that real shift of Paralympics shifted this whole view of?

Speaker 2: 8:48

disability. It's changed it completely. So London 2012 was the first time ever that Paralympic athletes had full, full stages, that that actually we were treated the same. We have this. Everybody had the same experiences as their Olympic athletes. I think it's and it has opened up everybody's eyes about that actually, that because I was always I I remember that actually, when I first started athletics someone saying I was just having a go and it was and it and it's like she wasn't very serious, and that completely changed in 2012. And I think we are seen or the athletes now were seen as proper athletes in a way, and it was which they always were and and they should have always actually been but that that mindset in society has actually changed. And they train.

Speaker 1: 10:13

They train so much harder than like any other people because they have to work harder and you represented Team GB in the in the shop put and we you talked earlier about your love of sport when you were in the boys school or it wasn't a boys school. When you were in there with the boys it was a full boys school. But where was that? Where did you suddenly transition from that love of football and Formula One and all that would that? Where was that moment where you like, actually I'm going to go for this, I'm going to represent my country in the Paralympics.

Speaker 2: 10:47

It kind of happened quite quickly and quite unexpectedly. So I used to trampoline and then I watched my coach have an accident and then somebody just said and he was a special needs teacher in a school and I actually said, do you want to try athletics? And I would try any sport, I would do any sport. I was one of these that was outside in the rain playing on my own, playing football, netball, whatever. So I said yes, let's just have a go. And within a month of starting I was national record holder and it kind of just snowballed from there.

Speaker 2: 11:41

Nobody expected it and I I like it's never expected it, but it was just something that I had found and I started to really love and then, like our session every week turned into two hour session, which then was, which actually then was three days every week, which then was like four days a week, then was every day of the week, and it just snowballed from there. I think I've got sport in my blood because my granddad represented Scotland at rubber union so he played, for he played this Scotland in the 1945 Calcutta Cup and my uncle also played Scotland as your rubber union. So it's in the blood, it's in our family and I think that's where any sport that I will try, any sport for some fun.

Speaker 1: 13:00

It made me laugh. A few weeks ago you were on one of our webinars and you were leaving that webinar to go in zip wire and one of your training sessions. So you're definitely that you're an all-in-girl, aren't you? So we talked about these sort of different chapters, if you like. So the next chapter where did entrepreneurship come from? Where did you suddenly decide I'm going to go off and become an entrepreneur, I'm going to set up a multi-award winning business. How did that happen?

Speaker 2: 13:26

So I was unfortunately made and redundant in 2017 and, as a disabled person, it's really hard to find a job, so it so it averages out that you, that you are five times it's it's five times hard to get a job and I was made, I'm made, I'm made, I'm made and redundant out of and the job that I absolutely loved and and somebody called Jane Stewart, who I will always be grateful for, said take out and the middleman and and set up on, set up on your own. Because I had, I had, I had six months of interviews. I had I applied for like 40 odd jobs. I had interviews for over three, three quarters of in them, and constantly, and the answer was no. And the answer was very clearly was because I didn't fit in and and how.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Everyone said just just go it on your own. I had no business experience, I didn't have a clue what I was doing and I just was like in what? That was my first question. It's like I'm gonna set up on my own business doing what? And that was her, and she said you can do this, you can do that, you can do the other and it and it just flowed. So I, so I initially set up a good a tea consultancy to try and to try and actually make sure that sports clubs were accessible and inclusive, and the more that I dug into that and the more it became a parent, it's a much wider issue.

Speaker 1: 15:45

So so sport still plays a part, but, but but it's actually trying to change the wider society and you run workshops don't knew that or led by individuals with disabilities, and are all focused on how discrimination is inherently built in society. Give me some examples of those workshops that you do.

Speaker 2: 16:10

So we have our favourite edge of one is just a generic disability and awareness and it's just explaining everything and about the certain communities and it answers those questions that everyone is really scared to ask, because everybody wants to ask the question but is like actually really scared to do it. And we use real life examples. So all of our deliverers use real life discrimination and examples. So I have a little bank of them and I just use odd little ones just to show how I was discriminated about. But how then I turn that actually around to try and educate somebody. And it's just, you know, and hearing it in a real life story is much more powerful than actually reading about it. No, that's what all of us try to do.

Speaker 2: 17:36

We have courses in equality and diversity, we have courses in inclusive sports, because that's what I know and that's what I love. But then we are also looking at how employers and businesses can help people with individual impairments. So like hammering the process of trying to look at disability overall in the workplace and then somebody who has cerebral causey as you water those thoughts you can do, or little hints and tricks you can help someone as she makes something so much easier, and then we're going to look at visual and hearing impairment and that's your mental health as well and neurodiversity, because it's huge and employers tick the boxes but they don't always ask the questions they are. So a disabled person has to go and say I'm struggling with this, whereas the employer would be good if they were like okay, ask them straight out, what can we do to help you?

Speaker 1: 19:20

actually, before an issue happens really, and that's what you talk about it's beyond just ticking a box. So many organisations will tick boxes, but that's the aim, isn't it? That people go above and beyond. And I know you've also found the ability digital limited as well, because obviously you know nothing else to do out there, claire, to be honest. But this is all about creating this disability awareness app, and I know that you, as well as a human, are always open to the fact that you have a sack full of ideas for the future, claire. What is next for you and how much of it's going to involve sport?

Speaker 2: 19:56

Quite, I think, sports up there. I'm going to have to be honest. So, in terms of and the app, we are looking to add three more impairments in the app. So currently non-and disabled people can experience and learn and learn about visual, hearing and physical impairment, and we want to add mental health, neuro diversity and learning in impairment into that. We are also looking at how to make it more interactive and more immersive using immersive technologies. So it's so somebody will have a real, virtual and reality experience of an impairment and that is the app. And then I've got some sporty little bits on the side that I'm looking at doing, which is under wraps, because it's going to be new, it's going to be exciting and we just want to get more young people and involved in sport, because sport is a driver for changing somebody's life, and if I can offer a sporting opportunity to somebody that has an impairment, then that's great and I have done my job Well you know, what.

Speaker 1: 21:44

Well, we will keep. Well, I believe you're a woman that will never have done her job, because there's always going to be something in that sack full of ideas. Claire, I can see how happy and how you light up when you talk about this new development, so please do keep us involved. This is why you won the Inclusive Innovation Award this year. It's clear that everything that you're doing has that extra mile in it. So you can find out more about Claire and the Ability Consultancy. We'll put it in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Claire, thank you so much for being continually awesome and joining us on today's podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you and thank all of you for listening. Please do find out more. Check out Claire. She is an absolute force of nature and an incredible role model, and every week, I'm delighted to talk to amazing individuals who are fantastic role models driving change. And remember, every week we have somebody new that you can listen to. So please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You will be able to uncover all of the stories behind the Northern Powering Awards, and remember, they are not just for one night. If you would like to join us on our mission of professional personal development, please sign up to our digital hub. We are powernet. We can find out more about these brilliant role models and do join all our socials at North Power Women on Twitter and Northern Power Women on all of the other. Thank you so much for joining. My name is Simone. This is the Northern Power Women podcast. In what goes on media production.