Born in Khartoum in Sudan, Connie grew up living in seven African countries. Since completing her MA in Human Geography, 17 years ago at the University of Edinburgh, she has lived and worked in 15 countries; experience that has made her an expert in behavioural change. Check out her website www.connie-smith.co.uk

Connie’s career began with direct B2C sales in California during university holidays. She learned the basics of selling, managing attitude and how to successfully cold call and not be demoralised by hearing “no”.

By knocking on more than 50 doors a day over an 80 hour week, Connie ranked in the top 30 female sales people out of a student contractor base of 3000, moving on to recruit, train and manage one the highest producing teams in the international division. This laid the essential foundations which underpin the highly skilled philosophy she brings to her work motivating and coaching people to perform at their best.

Post university Connie worked in the London corporate sector focusing on building her B2B sales skills and experience, with a view to returning to Africa to use her core competencies to do some impactful work.

For the last 5 years Connie’s role as an independent sales consultant has helped more than 20 socially-minded organisations and their teams to build culture and transform their sales results, while at the same time, supporting individuals to become effective leaders. She has worked in the WASH, Solar, Agriculture, Telecoms, Social Enterprise, Nutrition and Tech Start-Up sectors, focusing most of her engagements in Africa.

Passionate about equality and social enterprise Connie volunteers as Chair of Trustees for Evergreen Africa a charity operating in Uganda where she also has family ties. She also sits on the board of  Smiling Through Light, a female run solar social enterprise in Sierra Leone.

In her free time she can be found swimming, dog walking experimenting with new cuisines in her kitchen or exploring local restaurants.

You can read Connie’s interview here