Sharon Nixon

Finance Officer

Sharon was brought up in Dorset and has spent most of her working life in the education sector. She initially worked as a marine geochemist at Southampton University but moved in to academic administration in 2000. She came to Cumbria in 2002 to work at St Martin’s College (now the University of Cumbria) where her career developed into Enterprise and Outreach work primarily with European-funded projects aimed at supporting local small-to-medium sized enterprises.

After taking a ‘gap year for grown-ups’ she joined CfLP in 2012 initially working on the operational and programme management of supplied-in services. Her work then developed into finances and general project management and, most recently, she has focussed in solely on the finance needs of the business.

“I am a strong believer in opportunity through education and training and during the years that I have worked at CfLP I have seen many examples of this. I am thrilled to be continuing my work at CfLP by focussing on the financial areas of the business, which I love. It is great to be part of a high quality service being delivered in Cumbria, offering unique facilitative, inspirational and empowering events and programmes that make a real difference.”

You can contact Sharon on: sharon.nixon@cforlp.org.uk.

Leadership Top Tip

“Avoid Generalisation –As someone who has made a career out of detail and small print, accuracy and precision are important to me and I like to see that in leaders. I like to see a leader notice, and act on, differences in their teams and to avoid sweeping generalisations when talking to them. Imagine saying to your team “I know everyone has given 110% to this project”. Can you be sure that everyone has given 110%? If not, you risk alienating and/or de-motivating the ones who have given 110%. They might ask themselves ‘why should I bother if you can’t notice the difference?’ Good leadership involves knowing when to treat your team as a team and when to treat them as individuals.”