Mandy McNeil joined our Club Meeting on Zoom to mark the International Day of Peace. Mandy spoke candidly about her life and her experience as a 9/11 Survivor from the World Trade Centre in New York.
Club Members were moved and lost for words by Mandy’s powerful testimony.
Mandy is originally from New Zealand and from 2000 to 2004 was working for the largest global insurance company called Marsh which had offices across Manhattan including the 99th floor of the World Trade Centre where Mandy worked. On the 11 Sep 2001 Mandy remembers it was a beautiful day when she tried to get to work but was unable to get into the building because everyone was leaving but she had no idea what was happening. She got to a place where she could look back at the building and saw first hand the devastating images that we all saw on our TVs. 
Almost everyone in her team of 40 had died and she represented the company at 7 funerals including that of her boss who she was very close to. The people who died were from all over the world – and had nothing to do with what the terrorists were trying to target. Unsurprisingly Mandy suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which can affect her when any shocks happen now. Mandy’s need to feel safe is a big part of life now and she is unable to travel by airplane. She lived in fear for a really long time and still feels it now sometimes. A year after 9/11 she moved to the Nashville office to get out of New York and stayed in the US for a few more years. She advised Marsh to shut the business unit and they asked her to run it as a small business – which she did, successfully and then sold it. When she got divorced she thought about going back to New Zealand but decided to work in England because that’s where her grandparents were from but she didn’t know anyone. Mandy is the CEO of Mandy McNeil International. She came to the UK on the Queen Mary, visited St Albans and decided she liked it – there are lots of cafes and she feels safe in cafes so she moved here 5 years ago. She lives near the Courtyard Cafe, where Radio Verulam has its studio. Mandy had started sharing her story with other people and told it on Radio Verulam. She has found that hearing other stories has helped her to heal. She has fallen in love with the hospitality industry in St Albans and as a result Mandy is Vice Chair of the Save St Albans Pubs campaign. She is very active in the community – on the Board of St Albans BID (Business Improvement District), Radio Verulam and a Councillor for Sopwell among a host of other things. Unsurprisingly Mandy’s path has crossed with Soroptimists and we share a great memory with Mandy when she was MC at the Mayor’s Pride Awards in 2019 (we won in the Voluntary Sector category!).
We are sure we will work with Mandy again in the future – as Soroptimists we say we are “women inspiring action, transforming lives” and Mandy embodies these words.
Members were asked to share peace experiences on the evening but it was hard to follow Mandy’s story. Madeline told us how scary it was to be on holiday in Manhattan when 9/11 happened and not understanding what was going on. Helen was able to tell us about her visit to Hiroshima last year, when she had been reluctant to go initially. The guide for Helen’s visit was an advocate for peace and the thought Helen wanted to pass on is that peace is something we have to work for.