Kate Bright, Chair of the Steve Shirley Pioneers Fund, shares why continuing Steve's legacy means so much to her.

Dame Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley is an outright inspiration and hero of mine. I was lucky enough to interview her back in 2021. It was her first-ever Instagram Live, and she was well into her eighties. Afterwards, I found out that my own aunt (also a business trailblazer in her own right) had also met her decades ago through her work. I felt a deep gratitude to Dame Stephanie for being the definition of a pioneer. She put the ladder down so future generations of women could climb it too. 

Her story really began as a child refugee fleeing Nazi Germany. By the 1960s, she became a pioneer for women in tech – founding Xansa at her kitchen table with £6 of capital. She would sign her business correspondence 'Steve' rather than 'Stephanie' because no one would reply to a woman running a software company. She hired brilliant, mathematically minded women whose talents were overlooked by traditional businesses. Steve ran Xansa almost entirely on job-shares and home-working decades before flexible working was common. 

Steve was equally inspiring in her personal life. While Xansa thrived, her only child, Giles, needed increasingly intensive support as an autistic person with a learning disability. Steve used most of the wealth she gained from selling her company to tackle the barriers Giles and other autistic people faced in a world that wasn't built for them.

Steve founded three autism charities. She established Autistica to use research to deliver change at scale. Steve and Autistica made substantial breakthroughs during her lifetime, but as a society, we're still failing autistic people. 

I find it particularly hard to hear the experiences of autistic women and girls, and those in the criminal justice system. I find it intolerable that autistic women are at significantly higher risk of sexual violence, and that most will experience this trauma. More broadly, autistic women are diagnosed later in life, meaning they can spend years, if not decades, without the support they need or an understanding of why they struggle with things others don't. The consequences can last a lifetime. I often think of my nieces, and of the fairer world I want them to grow up into; one where being a woman or girl, autistic or not, doesn't mean navigating a system built without you in mind. That's not an abstract commitment. For me, it's personal. 

In the criminal justice system, the picture is equally bleak. Autistic people are overrepresented at almost every stage. Yet their needs are too often missed or misunderstood, with devastating consequences for them and their families. This matters deeply to me. I've seen firsthand what is at stake when the justice system gets it wrong, and how central it is to public safety and to the fairness we owe everyone in society. 

These challenges feel enormous, but I keep coming back to why Steve founded Autistica:  

• To carry out world-leading research and policy work to address the biggest challenges facing the autistic community 
• Researching what would change lives, and  
• Using evidence to demand better.

One of Autistica's main 2030 Goals is to ensure all autistic people can access support from day one, even while they're waiting for a diagnosis, which can take such a long time. That means understanding where people are being failed, proving what support works, and making sure it reaches people before problems become crises. As I often say in my work in the security world, preventing a crisis is better than managing one.  

For me, the Steve Shirley Pioneer Fund isn't just a tribute; it's a continuation of her life's work. It’s ensuring pioneering research happens faster, and that we keep moving towards the world Steve so deeply wanted for her late son, Giles. It's a privilege to support this work and help continue Dame Stephanie Shirley's legacy as Chair. As Dame Stephanie always said, she wanted to make her life ’a life worth saving’. I want to do everything I can to ensure her legacy lives on.

Please get in touch with me if you'd like to get involved in any way. I shall be weaving awareness of this Fund into my conversations across the security industry and the private client and family office world. I can't wait to help be part of something so special.