Heather Clabon, Business Practice Director, is a Leicester-born farmer’s daughter who prides herself on having a gift for numbers and attention to detail. "All a client needs to know is that their money is in safe hands," she says. "I am as transparent and straight as the day is long."
Clabon has a pivotal role in Sans Frontières. She says: "I sit in on all the team meetings, negotiate contracts, make sure we’re not over-promising, and generally help complete the circle linking the clients and the partners."
Clabon originally studied Hotel Management at Leicester in the Seventies. She learned basic book-keeping and saw the hotel industry as "a passport to freedom". She loved meeting people and once turned down an elopement offer from the manager of the Boomtown Rats. Wise move.
But the hotel industry did not suit Clabon’s gregarious nature, so she joined PR firm Burson Marsteller in 1982, despite not really knowing what public relations was. In those days, not many people did. Although Clabon’s official duties were in the Accounts Department, handling invoices and balance sheets, she made sure she attended any training courses that were available, to expand her repertoire.
"I went on anything and everything," she says. "I learned how to write press releases, stuff press packs, organise press conferences and journalist databases. I used to bolt myself onto team meetings and observe."
After six years with Burson Marsteller, a job came up at rival consultancy Good Relations. "I was very clear about where I wanted to go," she says. "I believed that account handling and accounting should always go hand in hand, but they often don’t. I had a sixth sense about how to bridge the gap between the two and persuaded them to create a new role for me."
She spent six years as Accounts Manager for Good Relations - managing to achieve a degree in Politics and Economics from the Open University at the same time - before being seconded to the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1995 as Contracts Director.
She enjoys the challenges and the commercial imperative at Sans Frontières. "I love money because it never lets me down," she says. "It’s either right or wrong, and the numbers always tell me a story."
Married for over 20 years, with two teenage daughters, Clabon loves reading escapist literature and engaging in homely pursuits such as cooking and needlework. But unfortunately, horse-riding is no longer an option, after she fell off her mount and broke her coccyx. At least she is never thrown by figures...
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