Six questions with... Karen Skipper

What’s your favourite way to greet people?

I’m not much of a hugger, even with dear friends, so a quick hug is good with me. People who keep hold of my hand while chatting really unnerve me!

What conversation makes you happy?

I love conversations at work when you know you are on to something potentially fabulous that’s really going to help people/make a change. I had this a couple of years ago when I had the idea to bring together a whole group of people and agencies to form the Trans Learning Partnership. We now have our first staff member and I am so proud.

I love conversations at home about travel and planning life abroad when I retire in my adopted second home of Greece, where I lived for years many moons ago (my oldest son is half Greek).

What conversation topic makes you nervous?

Party politics. I find it boring, always have and am out of my depth very quickly. I am a political person but not party political.

What makes you laugh?

My husband, Rob, makes me laugh a lot. He’s the antidote to my over-thinking things. We met at school then got together 30 years later and we have long memories and share a good laugh about them often. He got me through my breast cancer very soon after we re-connected and my enduring memory is him telling me to ‘loose that down-y mouth’ or I’d make myself worse. He was right, continuing to laugh really does help through the bad times.

If you could ask someone, dead or alive, anything - who and what would you ask them?

I’d have a very long conversation with Emma Goldman, an early feminist and free-thinker who was way ahead of her time in supporting gay rights in the early 1900s, and of course women’s rights. She had the most fascinating mind and life.

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

Putting my complete trust in a surrogate to have my second son. Scary and vulnerable but so life-affirming in the literal and figurative sense. Thank you, Louise.

Karen Skipper, CEO at Spectra

Website www.spectra-london.org.uk