HerStory of Rye, funded by the Heritage Lottery Funded Project last year, explores women’s working histories in Rye. We are continuing to add to the project, interviewing and photographing additional women for the website at www.herstoryrye.co.uk. You can listen to all the women’s stories on the website.
This month we feature Ali Casey, administrator and interviewer for the HerStory Project. She has also worked as a volunteer for the Winchelsea Residents’ Association and is currently doing fundraising events for the town.
Before Ali moved to Winchelsea in 2020 she worked mostly in advertising and the media.er first job was with The Guardian newspaper in their advertising and media sales department. She worked directly with clients on the smaller end of the scale. It was a big department and although she worked hard she said it was a fun place to be, and working conditions and pay was good. At the same time she bought a flat and got married!
After two years she left to work for The Observer in a similar capacity. She had her first child at aged 24, and she had two more children quickly after. She and her husband then moved to Milton Keynes because of his work. She took time away from paid work when her children were small but she soon started working part-time, mostly in the evenings, doing marketing for an advertising firm, and building a database. As her children got older, she set up a marketing company, together with a graphic designer, for small and medium-sized companies.
After her husband was made redundant, he also worked with the company, but after several years and a couple of bad debts, Ali wanted the security of a salaried job. She managed to get a job with a market research company in Milton Keynes running their market research / telephone centre. While there she gained a diploma in Market Research and in Strategic Marketing. She was there around seven years and when she was made redundant it was somewhat of a shock.
Around this time she began to volunteer for the Princes Trust, working with young people who wanted to set up their own business. She provided practical help like writing business plans and general support, advice and encouragement.
In 1998 Ali got a job near Luton with a consulting firm who specialised in film, music, TV and consumer electronics. She became associate director. She loved the job, she says. Within a year she was looking after the music side of the firm and travelling to both New York and LA. But in 2015, the company began to change. It was sold and a new MD put in place.
After many interviews Ali got a job with Kantar, a global market research firm in London as a senior account director. When Covid hit in 2020 she had a team of 25 working for her, as well as major global clients. During Covid Ali worked from home but she was also supporting her team and a lot of her work became pastoral care.
Image Credits: Herstory .