"I get knocked down, but I get up again, won’t let anybody keep me down" - this has had to be my mantra over the years as I have faced major challenges before and during my career, from supporting my family when my brother in law was kidnapped in South America, and again when my own brother was paralysed in a motorbike accident during my initial airline training, but also surviving a house fire and later on a life threatening illness, and then catastrophically failing at the last hurdle in my quest to become a captain - this is not a story of woe but of overcoming adversity, building resilience, and digging deep to be the best version of myself that I could become - and then leading on to the founding of a charity that started as a great idea and grew into a national charity that has received accolades from all areas including the NHS it was set up to serve, the aviation industry that described us as “the only good thing to happen to aviation in 2020” and across the higher echelons of government in both Westminster and Holyrood. We built a business from scratch in the most unconventional way.