Podcast Episode 50: The Lady in the Pearl Necklace - A Tribute to Ellie Lindsay OBE

The Lady in the Pearl Necklace by Roland Rennie If you can cast your minds back to the days before Covid, perhaps even further back to the days before Twitter, and finally a long, long way back 11, 12, even 14 years ago to the start of the financial crisis. There used to be a conference on wound care that took place every November in a spa town in the north of England called Harrogate, and it used to be possible in those days to visit the conference and to enjoy the fact that was packed with people whom you knew, had worked with, worked for, even were friends with. You could sit, chat, dance, drink with them, all without being scared of catching some unspeakable disease. Around that time, in 2008 I believe, I was there, setting up a stand for a small organisation I had helped to start called the International Wound Infection Institute. We had a tiny budget, so I bought a suitably tiny portable stand to put in a side area of the Harrogate exhibition space, where I had my little shambolic set of booklets and displays to try to get in order. Tidiness has never been my strong point and while I was trying to make sense of what I had dumped into the back of my car during the setup period before the conference actually started, I looked over at the booth across from me which was a little larger than mine but already in a slightly brighter, more salubrious area of the exhibition, the space where people might actually stop and look when the conference began. There I saw a distinguished looking lady in a pearl necklace slowly start to get her items out of a well-labeled series of boxes and put them in order. She was looking serious, quietly purposeful, and clearly seemed to have a tried and tested system for unpacking all her materials, whereas I didn't have a system at all. What impressed me particularly was that at the end of the setup period this lady finished everything off with a nice vase of fresh flowers. It would have been the last thing I would have thought to do but the stand looked very nice while mine looked well sort of okay I suppose. I didn't get to meet the lady during the conference but I could see that her stand was all about legs. I think it was called the Lindsay Leg Club. Oh and another thing during the conference her stand was always busy while my little stand, well the less said about that the better. Three years later I was on my way again for the Wound Infection Institute to Cape Town, a place I'd never been to before for another wound care conference. It was the end of January when things were at their most miserable in the UK. Personally, I was not in the best frame of mind for travel, but some part of me must have surely been looking forward to a bit of sun. At the airport, I met our then chair, Keith Harding, and we flew out to South Africa on the same plane. On the walk to the plane, Professor Harding said hello to somebody he knew, who I recognised as the same lady with the pearl necklace who had set up the booth in Harrogate. And as it transpired, we had tickets sitting next to each other and we started talking. In fact, we had a wonderful flight to Cape Town together, chatting, drinking wine and realizing that between us, we knew a lot of the same people. Once out in Cape Town, the same lady went to a lot of trouble to make sure that I was never alone and never excluded from any entertainment that was taking place at the conference. I can honestly say that 11 years later, meeting Ellie Lindsay on the plane to Cape Town made that whole South African trip change from something to be tolerated to something to be treasured. My close friendship with Ellie began at this point. I met her and her equally dedicated and skilled colleague Lynn in London a few weeks later and after a couple of months I was invited to join the Lake Club Foundation's Board of Trustees. It was only then that I realized how much I'd underestimated the purposeful lady whom I'd first seen in Harrogate a few years previously. At our first board meeting it seemed obvious to me that Ellie had contacts that reached deep into the wound care community, from clinical experts to local club volunteers, to senior industry directors, to publishers and other business people. I realised that my wine drinking companion had already set up through force of will and great communication skills a thriving network of lead clubs in the UK and Australia with plenty of goodwill and potential ahead. We work closely together and very harmoniously most of the time and after a few years I had the privilege of chairing the foundation for a while. Ellie has a contact list that most people in the wound care business would be extremely envious of. But the difference between her lists and a list, for example, that I would try to put together is that hers was developed with true passion for the cause of advancing the well-being of people with chronic leg disease. Most of the rest of us would be trying to cobble contacts together with a view to trying to turn a profit. I don't know how Ellie had been able to develop such an impressive skill at networking but I think it comes from her personal belief in the leg club cause with a strong layer of personal integrity behind it. I've seen Ellie be able to get things out of people that they didn't even know they had and I think that for those of us who get her persona it is that which resonates the most. I could go on and talk about the highly successful conference that Ellie with Lynn's support set up from scratch 20 years ago. I could talk about the respect and access Selly receives from the major wound care publishers and their teams and the respect that the World Union of Wound Care Societies has for her and her achievements, naturally reflected in both her OBE and the World Union Lifetime Achievement Award that she received in March this year. I could talk about the 40 leg clubs in the UK, the eight leg clubs in Australia and the new leg clubs emerging around Europe in the US and in Singapore. I could about the Leg Club industry partners, the only vehicle I know of where competing wound care companies voluntarily collaborate on projects that promote the Leg Club mission and values. Finally, I could talk about the 14,736 members who have benefited from the psychosocial model that Ellie has developed. But for this special podcast, the image of Ellie that I hold most strongly in my mind is that first one I mentioned, of the lady I'd seen but not yet met, quietly and purposefully putting together a stand and making sure that it was topped off with a bunch of flowers. To me this reflects her personality as profoundly as anything else because when all is said and done Ellie will just get on with doing what she thinks needs to be done. If it's done in a great party atmosphere with drinks and friends and dancing that would be all to the good but if it's done in the background where no one is looking and no one is yet listening it will still get done. In fact it took a long time for Ellie to be listened to and it's a testament to her that so many people around the world are listening to her now. But one thing has stayed the same, she has always known what needed to be done to help the cause that she is most passionate about. That people with chronic leg disease, who are at risk of chronic leg disease, need to be advocated for, listened to, cared for, given all the tools that they can have to help themselves and finally, most significantly, treated with respect. I sometimes think that Ellie doesn't realize quite how much she is respected herself. There are people who have achieved a lot less but who have a much higher opinion of themselves but I think that this is a facet of people who genuinely put others first. They don't really take on board how much they have achieved. It's always something that I'm happy to remind Ellie of and I am so glad that she has now garnered the recognition that she deserves for those achievements. Thank you.