I am the lucky person who has been charged with filling Shelagh’s very large shoes (I don’t mean she has big feet) and so when I was asked to write this article I thought it might be helpful to give you a quick life history for those who don’t know me yet.

I am 54 (yes really), married to my wife Julia, 29 years in April, and have a cat called Teifi. Before arriving at The Door I worked for 33 years in Lloyds Bank, finishing as a Business Adviser to the local area. In 2013 I decided to take a redundancy package and went about looking to find something more worthwhile to do. I was unsure what it was I wanted to do. But in July that year I was lucky enough to get a job at The Door teaching Horticulture as part of creative futures in the Hope Training department. I have to say that I fell in love with The Door and what it does as soon as I started. It wasn’t long before I’d started volunteer mentoring in my spare time.

When the training department closed I was lucky enough to be kept as part of The Door team covering leave for Anne in the Shop until she returned in December last year. As I was preparing to start job hunting again the opportunity came up to apply to become the mentoring team leader and so here I am!

It will obviously take a while for me to get my feet under the desk but I am looking forward to working with everyone at The Door especially my team of wonderful mentors.

Alistair Mentoring Team Leader