(Women's day special) Sicily to England | Inspirational Interview Claudia Tinnirello [Part 1]

Pure terror for the first 5 years of my life outside the household. I had pretty much everybody against me at home to say, "Where are you going? You're a girl!" Me becoming a good student, learn and study and go the extra mile, it's always been like a defense mechanism. I wanted to be different from the rest of the women around me. That to be independent, you need to earn your own money. How am I gonna do it if I don't even— I'm not even able to buy a train ticket for myself? And I was the first woman to leave Sicily all by myself.

Good morning, afternoon, evening, people who are watching this interview. I am so excited to have this next leader joining us. I'm pretty sure you love her story when you hear about it, so help me welcome Claudia Tirano in my next episode of inspirational interview. Welcome, Claudia.

Thank you, Haritosh Srivastav. Hello everyone, it's a pleasure to be here.

Pleasure is all mine. So, uh, as you know, I, I do these interviews from people who inspire me in some other way. I really learned a lot, uh, since you are the president of the club. And we're not only about Toastmasters here, we But yeah, Toastmasters is one part of it. So you have very interesting journey on how you came from Italy, Sicily to Basingstoke, UK. Would you like to give us a brief summary about that?

Yes, absolutely. I was born and raised in Sicily. All my family is from there. So long generation of Sicilians, and I was the first woman to leave Sicily all by myself and come to a different country, which is England. So I grew up in Sicily, I studied there, graduated there, but the work situation is very tough. There are no jobs, pretty much there are no jobs. Even if you want to wait at tables, you need to find a recommendation for somebody to say, "She's a good waiter, I recommend her." So any kind of jobs you want, especially if you have a degree and you aspire for a different job. Very difficult to find one. So there was an opportunity to work in a call centre here in the UK and nail my English, improve my English. And I said, why not? So I came over, left everything behind me, which was really hard. It was, I had pretty much everybody against me at home to say, where are you going? You're a girl. You're going to a different country. Your English is not your first language. I'm sure you can find a call centre job here. You're I need to go. But I, for me, living in England, it's always been a dream of mine. I wasn't planning to stay here for so long. I said, let's just go there for a short time, maybe 4 months, improve my English, experience something while I'm still young and then come home. So I left Sicily. It was hard. It was really hard to leave home for the first time all by myself. And when I arrived to the UK, it just hit me. I thought it was like, you know, just to like when you go on holiday, it's beautiful. But I wasn't coming here on holiday. I was here living, coming here to live here. And the first impact with English language was horrendous. Horrendous. I couldn't understand a word. Or what the lady at the ticket, at the train station told me. I wanted to buy a ticket to go to my final destination, which was Farnborough nearby. I didn't understand the lady and she didn't understand me either. And I said, I'm going to be doing a call center job in English, Italian as well. And how am I going to do it if I don't even— I'm not even able to buy a train ticket for myself. And that's where everything started. Long journey. Wow.

I mean, I'm really, really— I mean, I knew a little bit about this journey, but I'm really impressed from being able to be born and brought up in a place where it's not encouraged that women do the job and that thing. Yeah, I've read your book, so it's mentioned in there. It was really heartening to see, uh, and then you coming out into a country where you are not sure whether people will understand you or you will understand them. So what do you think was the motivation behind all this? How, how did you get all the courage and motivation to do all this all alone?

Yeah, I guess from out of my family, I've always been the one that always wanted to study and learn and be independent, most of all. Majority of women in Sicily, especially old school ladies, probably more my mom's generation— so I grew up in a family who seemed like my mom and all my aunties and grandmothers, everybody always been a housewife. So the job was to leave the parents' house, get married, and go into the husband's house, and the job was to raise the children look after the house and the husband will look after everything else. I didn't like that. I never wanted to ask for money to, like, a man, to say, can you give me some money because I need to go and buy new pair of shoes? I always wanted to be independent, and I knew that from a very early start that to be independent you need to earn your own money, so you don't need to say, ask anything to anyone. And to earn your own money and decently, you need an education most of all. So I said, that's what I'm gonna do, focus on studying, got my degree, I studied even more when I came here, became a certified marketeer. So for me, studying is a way of— it's like the more you earn, the more you learn, the more you learn, the more you earn, that's what they say, and it is true. So for me, it was in the— I wanted to be independent, and when the opportunity for a job came in, I took it. Even if it was flying to a different country, I did it. And that was what— that what it was. I wanted to be different from the rest of the women around me in my family and in Sicily.

Awesome, awesome. I was going through your chapter in the book, and there was a mention of a special teacher who Yeah, who's not— who was not your favorite to say? And this I thought would be really interesting to bring in this, if you are okay with that. I know you had some hardship dealing with her, but I believe that would be really helpful lesson for people, and especially for women and girls who's gonna watch this interview, to know how to tackle difficult people and difficult situations. So if you want to talk about that.

Yes, absolutely. So I started primary school when I was 5, and I went to nursery only for part-time for like a year. So for me, primary school was the very first time when I was going to be away from home, from my family, for like 5 to 6 hours a day. And my primary school teacher, which was with me for the first 5 years of my school career, was the same lady. And I don't know if you've ever seen the film Matilda or read the book Matilda from Roald Dahl. There's a lady called Miss Trunchbull, which is very, very like a little bit of a nasty lady running the school. My teacher was pretty much similar style of Miss Trunchbull, which she used to terrorize all of us if we didn't behave, if we weren't quiet. We were not allowed to speak between us, each other, or stand up. If we didn't do the homework, she would shout at us, slap our faces, even pinch our fingers and hands with sewing needles. Wow. Lock us in dark rooms for like an hour. So it was like pure terror. And I was petrified. I remember telling my parents every night before going to bed, I don't want to go to school tomorrow. And they were like, why? Why not? I'm scared. They say, oh, come on, your sister goes to the same school and she's not scared. It must be just you. Of course she wasn't scared. She had a different teacher and the parents couldn't really experience what a 5-year-old was experiencing. Pure terror for the first 5 years of my life outside the household. And it was petrifying. So my job was to make sure I keep my head down, do all my homework. Always been worried that I couldn't sleep at night because I was worried that my homework wasn't good enough, because the day after I didn't want to be punished or be put— be shouted at and be humiliated in front of everybody. So for me, becoming a good student, learn and study and do— go the extra mile, it's always been like a defense mechanism. And that's why now it's like, I need to study, I need to study, I need more and more and more, because it's like, if I don't study and I don't know enough, I'm gonna be punished. I don't know by who now because I'm not a little girl anymore, but still in my mindset. So yeah, that was a kind of tough experience to have an adult shouting and, yeah, trying to scare you every day of your life from Monday to Saturday. That was the day we used to go to school.

Yeah, thanks for sharing. That's really emotional. And when I was reading that chapter and that particular portion, it actually reminded me— and I've actually not talked about that in public anywhere before this, this might be the first time I'm disclosing this— but when I was a kid and I was studying, I think it was, must have been class 5th, 6th, or 7th, some, some class, and we used to have tuition teacher, uh, like extra classes at home. And there was this one tuition teacher who used to slap really hard, I mean like 8-10 times per day. And I know when you say that you're feeling nauseatic and you don't want to, because I went through that same feeling. I know what it feels like, no, when you, you, you have the terror and you don't have anything to escape. So you, you have to study just because you don't want to be beaten. You don't want to be— yeah, so yeah, I, I—

you fear for your life. You go to school every day, free. I'm gonna die.

I think is nobody else will understand that.

Absolutely. But I don't know if I should say thanks, I should thank this, my teacher, for making me want to go always the extra mile, even though it's become like a defense mechanism for me to study and learn because I have to, otherwise somebody's gonna shout at me. But because of her, I studied and studied and studied and carry on studying. So is it a good thing? I don't know. I don't know.

I also don't know, and I, I don't pretend to know that because it's not my forte. I do not know whether it was a good thing, bad thing for me, but yeah, that it is what it is, and it was what it was.