Get to Know… Mrs Bushell, Development Director

 by Nathaniel Gingell

1. How long have you worked at PGS?

9½ years, the longest I’ve ever worked in one place

2. What do you like most about your job?

The best thing is seeing how generous our many hundreds of donors are in supporting our bursary programme through The WIlliam Smith Fund and our annual Giving Days. It is just fantastic to see people voluntarily giving their own money to provide opportunities for young people they don’t even know and will probably never meet. 

One of the big privileges of my job is getting to know alumni and donors so well. I meet literally hundreds of really interesting people through my job. They tell me about their experiences of PGS and what their education meant to them, which can be incredibly heart-warming.

I also love the school environment. There’s always something going on and it’s a lot more fun than working in a ‘normal’ office environment.

3. What do you like least about your job?

When pupils and staff leave PGS, we hope they will want to stay in touch with the school for the rest of their lives and many do. This means that we can be dealing with people aged anything from 18 to 98, every day. Inevitably, as the years go by, some of these people die and they are sometimes people we know very well. That is really sad.

4. Why did you choose to work at PGS?

I was living in London and wanted to move to the Portsmouth area as I had recently got married and my husband was based here because of his career in the Royal Navy. When I saw the PGS Development Director job description it seemed perfect, as it combined everything I had been doing for the past 20 or so years, since I had left university.

5. What is your most proud moment?

My proudest achievement at PGS has been significantly increasing the number of bursaries that we are able to offer because of all our fundraising activity. When we first launched The William Smith Fund to raise money for bursaries, 1 in 11 pupils was receiving some level of financial support. Today it is 1 in 6 and that is amazing. Winning a national fundraising award for our first online Giving Day in 2021 was also brilliant.

6. What is your most embarrassing moment?

A few years ago I was interviewing candidates to come and work in the Development Office here. I had to go to Reception to collect them and lead them up the stairs to my office. Just before the interviews began, I discovered that there was a split in the back of my trousers, so I had to keep walking sideways up the stairs, with my back towards the wall!

What is your favourite book or film?

Many years ago I read a Christian book called ‘What’s so Amazing about Grace?’ by Philip Yancey which had a profound effect on me. It’s all about forgiveness, and a huge reminder that no-one is perfect and we all make mistakes.

If you could tell your 20year old self something, what would it be?

I would say “The next few years are going to be very different from what you expect, but trust in your own abilities and be patient. Eventually you will have experiences beyond your wildest dreams”.