Hartlepool businesswoman shares her success journey as she pens a chapter in new book

Lorna Dunning, 45, has detailed her career rise to senior executive roles along with setbacks, the story of how she started her own business and her tips for success.

The book, called My Voice: A Collective Memoir by Women of Substance, features chapters by 23 women from across the world and was released at the start of July.

Lorna, who grew up in the Brooke Estate, was approached by the publishers on LinkedIn.

She said: “I’ve always wanted to write and I’ve got several drafts of my own full book.

”I love to write and talk about personal development and mindset and it was an opportunity to do that.

"I was so grateful and excited to do it.”

Lorna, whose mum worked in a shop and her dad was a manager at one of the steel mills in Redcar, held a number of senior leadership roles throughout her career, most recently as a vice president at American Express Global Travel.

She studied business management and sociology at Leeds Trinity University and said going to university wasn’t the default route for people in her family.

The mother-of-two-said: “My dad loved education and he encouraged me and my sister to keep going.

"There was only a handful of people in my family who had gone to university.

“It wasn’t the expected thing that we would do, but my father was really supportive of us continuing.”

Lorna moved to Manchester at the age of 24 to start a job as a team leader in call centre.

Lorna said: "I’d never really wanted to stay away from Hartlepool I only moved to try and get some kind of career and then I figured if I could come back with the skills then it might be easier for me to live in the North East.”

At the age of 28, she eventually earned a senior leadership role managing teams remotely and returned to Hartlepool a couple of years later.

In 2019, Lorna started her own personal development business and now coaches people from as far as Minneapolis in the United States.

My Voice can be purchased on Amazon and proceeds go towards Singapore’s Children Society.

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