Breaking Barriers: Sonia Murton on Leading Women in Construction
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In this episode Kat is joined by Sonia Murton, voted Top 100 women in Construction, she’s changing the game by doing things differently. Sonia shares her experience of divorce, the impact that had on work and home, and the most incredible twist. KEY TAKEAWAYS Working with contractors, I’ve worked with all the different kinds of trades on site, everybody letting each other down, so I decided to create a business where I do self-delivery bringing people from different trades together to deliver 85% of on-site work. The construction industry is massively male dominated. My top tier management is 75% women. I think we have a different perspective on things, we look at things differently. I’m a strong and positive person. Getting divorced is a process that takes years, and it really knocks it out of you. I learned a lot from that divorce, but I wasn’t prepared for the emotional rollercoaster. It also had negative impacts on my family and everybody being disappointed, but it really knocked me emotionally.  You always think the grass is greener, but when you realise that this person is your true love and soul mate and the person you want to spend your life with, nobody else out there ticks the boxes. Sometimes you have to go through all that to realise that what you had was so brilliant and why the hell did we break up? Everything comes with age, and you can look back and learn from the mistakes. I’m happy that I went through it and it will never happen again. BEST MOMENTS “I do what I love every day, I do it will, and I like to make sure we all have great fun on the journey.”“We do building and construction with a feminine flair.”“We were doing to many things apart and not enough things together. Those that play together stay together.”“The piece of paper and the vows aren’t the glue for us, we know we’re meant to be together; we know we love each other dearly; we’ll do anything for each other.” ABOUT THE GUEST Sonia Murton is the Founder and Managing Director of Westbury FM, a specialist provider of property maintenance services to clients and facilities providers across central London and the home counties. Following a successful career as an Account Manager, Sonia established Westbury to disrupt the FM industry. Her vision was to create an organisation to deliver ‘much more than maintenance’. Today Westbury self-deliver hard, soft and specialist FM services to customers across a diverse range of sectors. Adopting a service-led, technology-enabled approach, Westbury care for the unique needs of each customer and their buildings 24/7. Sonia’s success has been recognised through the award of The Independent’s E2E Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs and Top 100 Influential Women in Construction. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Kat started her career as a teacher, before moving into Tech where she worked in different executive roles within teaching and consulting working across the globe, both in the public and private sector. Despite appearing 'successful' on the outside, she paid a heavy ‘life’ price. In 2016, her whole world collapsed. The reason? The compound effect of years of unhealthy and toxic habits that destroyed her health, relationship and career. She suffered a severe breakdown and lost everything. In the middle of this she got headhunted for her first CEO role. She rebuilt herself by changing just one small habit, and built a series of positive habits which has transformed her professional and personal performance, resulting in becoming the healthiest and happiest version of herself. She is a positive habits international keynote speaker and teacher, giving talks and delivering high impact programmes to organisations across the globe. LinkedIn Instagram
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