What’s with the name?

When I was looking for a fun, upbeat and memorable title that captured all my new consultancy stands for, someone told me this story. Immediately I had that sense that “Keep Your Fork” was just what I had been looking for…

An elderly woman in her twilight years is setting her affairs in order with her pastor, when she surprises him by asking to be buried with a fork in her right hand. When he asks why, she responded:

"I have been thinking about all of the banquets and church dinners that I attended through the years, and one thing sticks in my mind. At the best get-togethers, when the meal was almost finished, when some kind person came by to collect the dirty dishes, they would often lean over my shoulder and whisper, 'you can keep your fork.' And do you know what that meant? Something special was coming! Not a dull dish of jelly or ice cream, but something delicious like fudge cake or apple pie! When they told me I could keep my fork, I knew the best was yet to come!

"That's exactly what I want people to talk about at my funeral. Oh, they can talk about all the good times we had together in the past. But when they say, 'why the fork?', I want you to tell them that I kept my fork because I believe the best is yet to come!"

About Faye

Faye is proud to be a lifelong Sheffielder. She accidentally did a degree in Town Planning, since which time she has fallen into four distinctly different careers in retail management, training, business services and sales and marketing. Along the way she’s gained vital qualifications like bra fitter, job club leader, business counsellor and image consultant. 

After graduating, Faye’s first job was Debenhams womenswear’ assistant manager, a £1 million department with over 30 staff. Within a year, Faye had been invited to manage a branch of Principles, then joined a training organisation who were re-training unemployed adults to work at the new Meadowhall shopping & leisure centre. Through this, Faye was headhunted to join the Meadowhall marketing team in 1990 as a customer service trainer. Within a year, she had become the Manager of Europe’s first retail training academy.

.

During this time, she recruited and trained thousands of people, regularly featuring in the national media on all major TV channels and in the press, and toured the country training at other shopping centres and speaking at customer service conferences. 

Faye joined Rotherham Training & Enterprise Council in 1992, moving from a training & development role to member of the executive board, heading the sales & marketing department in 1995. Becoming a parent, she moved into TEC inward investment services, selling South Yorkshire as a location for inward investment worldwide.

After a four year career break, during which she established a school business skills training consultancy and volunteered as editor of a successful community magazine, Faye established a niche marketing and training practice, specialising in the voluntary-community and education sectors. Over the last five years she has worked with over twenty communities, charities and social enterprises and managed complex contracts running Objective One-funded marketing projects for South Yorkshire childcare and play provision, most recently promoting the third sector across the whole of the sub region through a Yorkshire Forward project.

Each year she also trains over a thousand students in the employability and enterprise skills they need to get ahead in the world of work or start their own business.

In 2008, Faye launched her own specialist marketing and training consultancy called Keep your Fork.