Spotlight On: Maxine Thurston, Sales and Marketing Director

Continuing on with our monthly 'Spotlight On' story about a member of our team. This month it's the turn of Sales and Marketing Director, Maxine.

What do you do/job role at Venture 1?

I’m the Sales and Marketing Director.

What sort of things do you do day-to-day at Venture 1?

My role is full of variety, which is one of the main reasons I love it - there’s no such thing as a typical day. But I start every morning on a call with my team, so we can set the day up right. After that, I split my time across a whole range of pre-sales, sales, marketing and management activities. Examples include nurturing customer accounts and relationships, writing proposals, building new partnerships, shaping marketing campaigns, defining sales and marketing strategy, devising new service offerings and working with the rest of the management team to drive our sustainability agenda. I feel very lucky to have such an enjoyable role and such a brilliant team around me.

What’s your favourite thing about working at Venture 1?

Not one, but two things actually and without a shadow of a doubt:

1. The People – I work with a superb bunch of diverse, highly talented colleagues. Having the calibre of technical consultants we do, makes my sales role so much easier! But it isn’t just the consultants - every single member of the Venture 1 team sets a really ‘high bar’ in terms of their abilities, positive attitude and work ethic.

2. The Ethos – Venture 1 is genuinely underpinned and driven by a sense of decency, openness and authenticity towards its customers, partners, suppliers, and staff alike. Doing the right thing in terms of delivering quality and value in a collaborative and honest way is really important to us. I’m someone who’s always disliked the concept of putting on a ‘work hat’ when I walk into the office and I never have to do that here, because the company values people as they are, and harnesses what they can bring to work by being themselves.

If you could invite any 3 people round for dinner who would it be?

Steve Davis would definitely be my number one choice! I’ve always been a huge fan, and I know a lot of people think he’s pretty boring but that’s absolutely not true – he’s not only a snooker legend but a DJ, and very funny man!

After that it would be literally any Fulham FC player. I’m a season ticket holder at the Cottage and a bit obsessed with both Fulham and football in general! If pushed it would have to be Tom Cairney though – club captain and fan favourite.

Lastly, and probably a bit controversially, it would have to be Lewis Hamilton. He’s the perfect example of someone who’s worked so hard to achieve his dream, and I genuinely think he’s the most talented F1 driver there’s ever been. But I would love to ask him what he really thought about what happened in that final 2021-22 race, and how close he actually came to quitting…