Alumna honoured in Queen’s Birthday Honours

Congratulations to Rae Stollard (née Sasson, Brooke Place, 1963) who was honoured with an M.B.E. in the Queen’s belated birthday honours in October 2020 for her services to the community in Bournemouth.

Rae was a member of Bournemouth Borough Council from 2011 – 2019 and an appointed Governor on the Royal Bournemouth & Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She has also worked as an advice worker in the Citizens Advice Bureau and sat on the local Trustee board as an appointee of the Council.

Rae was particularly passionate about encouraging physiotherapy in the community to enhance people’s quality of life at home or in care homes and facilitating rapid discharge from hospital to quality care in the community, the responsibility of local council services.

Rae wrote in to tell us how her education and boarding school experience at Ashford, formed the basis for how she met all the challenges of success and failure in the course of her life:

“55 years ago I was a new girl at Ashford School. I had spent the first 10 years of my life in the oilfields of Trinidad & Venezuela, visiting England twice in that time. I didn’t know pounds, shillings & pence; I had never heard of Birmingham & the only robin I saw was on Christmas cards. I was entirely on my own with the whole Atlantic Ocean between me and my family. The only means of crossing was by boat. The super constellation was just beginning to fly to Caracas, stopping in the Azores & Martinique en route. During the ensuing 7 years at boarding school, I only saw my parents in the summer holidays. I was desperately homesick for the whole time at Ashford. However, the pastoral care of Miss Nightingale and Miss Harland were a comfort; the friendships have lasted my lifetime.

In my working life as a physiotherapist, an advice worker in the Citizens Advice Bureau and the last 8 years as a Bournemouth Borough Councillor, I have drawn on all the resilience, discipline, and consideration for others, which were instilled into me by the stars (rewards for good work) and stripes (for disregarding rules) system and badges for achievements. Esse quam videri. Ut prosim.“