Profile - Shilla Patel

Shilla is currently the Chair of the London region and joint Vice-Chair of the national group. Her primary role within the London Fire Brigade is as an Equality and Diversity trainer, this is a relatively new role since August 2009. Previously she was the Brigade’s IT Trainer. Her career in the Brigade started in August 2004 and her experiences have been extremely rewarding and fruitful.

She is of Indian and Kenyan origin and her family home is Walsall, West Midlands. She has a twin sister who is a police officer for the Metropolitan Police. In 1992 she studied Public Administration at Sheffield Hallam University. One of her highlights was her placement with the Community Safety Unit, Sheffield City Council. It was here where she had her first insight into Equalities, specifically domestic violence, racism and youth crime. This became a stepping stone to other careers, such as the Leeds Inter-Agency Project, a multi-agency project focusing on educating agencies around domestic violence. Shilla moved from Sheffield to London in June 1999, starting a career with the Trade Union Congress at their National Education Centre. She started as an administrative assistant and then quickly moved to becoming a trainee trainer and then Personal Skills trainer and IT Trainer.

Shilla has numerous passions and interests, including photography and travelling. She has travelled widely, including New Zealand, China, Argentina, Brazil, New York, San Francisco and Europe. In February 2008 she joined an African Impact project in St Lucia near Durban, teaching conservation to young local Zulu children and volunteers using the medium of photography. This was an amazing life changing experience and the start of her passion for Africa, its people and culture. This inspired her to recently return to the continent and spend two months in East and South Africa. Shilla will be venturing to India on his next trip in January. She has also established the first Brigade photography club “Click to Inspire”, which now has nearly 150 members.

She is also an active member of two other support groups, NWFS (Networking for Women in the Fire Service) and Fairness (supporting Black and Minority Ethnic groups). She strongly believes that these support groups including AFSA have opened numerous doors to new challenges and have helped her develop many new skills, acquire new experiences, confidence and meet several inspirational individuals within the Brigade and externally, who have acted as mentors.

As chair of AFSA she hopes to continue to actively support, empower and educate AFSA members as well as non members to help these individuals to grow and develop along with AFSA, as it branches out nationally into other Fire and Rescue Services, importantly networking, learning and sharing and working in partnership
with these Services and also other London Fire Brigade support groups. She is looking forward to the new challenges this will bring.