Wonny Lea
@wonnylea
About
I’ve just celebrated my 70th birthday and I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been doing something new! If I had to put my finger on one life-changing event it would have to be getting the opportunity to attend Grammar School. In that environment I was middle of the road in terms of academia but I left school having been taught how to learn and for me that has been better than any exam results.
By the end of the swinging sixties I was a qualified nurse and midwife as well as being a wife and mother. Fitting life around my family I did all sorts of things from training as a florist and opening my own business; to running a crèche; to owning a pub; to working in the tourist industry! When I returned to nursing I had many of the life skills and business talents that the reorganised NHS was looking for and I successfully rose to become the Chief Nurse at Trust Board level in Cardiff.
Early retirement gave me another chance to seek out new opportunities and in what is possibly the opposite to a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ moment I established a Nursing Agency. My eldest daughter is now the MD of that company and her input gave me the chance of a second retirement and a new and unexpected career as a writer!
