This weekly series became the heartbeat of the Surrey Satellite 40th campaign. A spotlight on an SSTL colleague, framed by that striking pair of photos taken four decades apart. With only two people here since 1985 - one of them our founder and small-satellite legend Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting - we widened the net to ‘anyone who was alive back then.’ Forty-eight stories later the picture of SSTL feels richer. Some were only babies in 1985.. one arrived at the company only months ago. It didn’t matter. Every single one had a story worth telling.
My own route to Guildford started in Worcester with an English father and Scottish mother who had met in Birmingham - a wonderfully unglamorous Midlands origin story. Childhood was spent climbing trees when it was dry and disappearing into storybooks when it wasn’t. That combination of a restlessness to explore and a love of narrative continued. I had no engineering instincts - still don’t. I just wanted to be a salesman like my dad.
Hull came next, and a Business Development degree. Then a series of unconnected chapters. A heavy-industrial Sheffield wire manufacturer, a Dubai decade in equestrian construction, a briefer stint in Florence failing to learn Italian and eventually the space industry in Surrey. The common thread was sales and marketing; listening well and building that trusted bridge to the customer. But underpinning all of that is storytelling - understanding what a business is, then expressing that authentically. The story draws people in; the product keeps them. If not, the executive team start to look a bit nervous.
In a technical industry like ours it’s tempting to tell only the story of the hardware. And our hardware deserves that spotlight. As Martin Sweeting once said to Michael Portillo, every satellite has its own personality, and we become attached to them. And he’s right.. we do. But this year gave me the chance to tell the stories of the people behind them - engineers, specialists, characters - each with a personality every bit as distinctive as the missions they’ve built.
Running this campaign has been an honour. Thank you to everyone who let me tell their story.. and thank you to all of you who took the time to read them.