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Fay Hunkins Walcott (owner of Hunkins cHoice) completed a degree in Applied Social Sciences. With an end goal of moving into the mental health industry she dipped in and out of many jobs, including, childcare and generic social work. This enabled her to pursue her interest in mental health, with training being provided in her fields of interest. She then moved on to train at Broadmoor Hospital which gave her her post-qualifying award in working with criminally dangerous people managing mental health issues.

Fay decided to become an independent social worker, and this is where her inner entrepreneur begun to flourish. The next stage of her career involved working as the head of mental health services at the University of Birmingham, working with students. This diversified her skill set and prepared her well for the next stage of her entrepreneurial career.

After 6 years at the university, she created , a specialist mental health training and mentoring service. With this she changed the social support network within universities through creating new and innovative environments that others in the industry had failed to do. The introduction of social support in a group situation was the first radical change implemented, which allowed individuals with similar issues to meet in a controlled environment. Following this, Fay expanded her work internationally, providing government-funded support to give students suffering from mental health issues the opportunity to study abroad alongside their peers. Hers is the only service offering this in the UK to date.  Fay’s third entrepreneurial endeavour was to associate herself with National Mind and provide international specialised training to large organisations and Government agencies helping them to understand mental health in the workplace.

Based on a report by Rafael Peters