She’s worked with the abrasive London mayor Ken Livingstone and enjoyed a transatlantic career as a high-flying legal expert.
But for Crocketford’s Fiona Smith the rolling farmland of Galloway has always been home.
Now firmly settled at Balmaclellan with husband Alan, these days she devotes her talents to the Glenkens and District Trust, where as convener she oversees the awards process for the Blackcraig Wind Farm Community Fund.
Her role also involves leading on the Glenkens Community Action Plan, an ambitious blueprint aimed at steering the area towards a successful and sustainable future.
Fiona, 63, still has occasional forays into the financial world, she tells me, as a non-executive director of Manchester Building Society.
Prior to that, she was general counsel and corporate secretary at NEST - the National Employment Savings Trust – the UK body charged with helping smaller employers set up workplace pensions for their workforce – a role she found particularly rewarding.
It’s all a world away from Little Milton farm near Crocketford, where, Fiona fondly recalls, she grew up surrounded by the changing of the seasons and hay fields, with parents Willie and Shirley Halliday, and younger siblings Susan and Robin.
“My father was the third or fourth generation of Hallidays to farm at Little Milton,” she says.
“We owned it and it was a mixed farm with suckler cows and sheep.
“I have fond memories of helping out on the farm, driving the tractor and the lambing.
“Even when I was working I always came home and spent a week at lambing time to help out.
“It was always good to get back to my roots and do something physical – completely different from my day job which was all cerebral!”
Feeding cattle and sheep, checking the stock and, as the eldest, generally helping her dad out did her no harm at all later in life, Fiona reckons.
“It was definitely an advantage because even from a young age we were given the responsibility of doing a job, and trusted to get it done.
“I got a very grounded, supportive upbringing and quite a lot of experience.
“At heart I’m still a farmer’s daughter with rural roots and I’m very proud of that fact.
“I remember during one trip to the US the reaction when I told them I had to get back home for the lambing.
“Here was this reasonably well presented solicitor explaining what that was – I think they were quite surprised!”
Fiona takes me back to her schooling, which began at Crocketford Primary under “a very influential teacher”, Mrs Caldow.
“Crocketford was a very small school but she made the pupils believe they could do anything if they tried,” Fiona recalls.
“Occasionally she would give you a rattle over the knuckles – you would never get away with that today.
“But Mrs Caldow built a lot of self-belief into us which stood us in good stead.
“We took part in all the school festivals and won prize after prize against schools much bigger than ours.
“When Crocketford and Kirkpatrick Durham closed in 1968 all the children went to Springholm for P6 and P7.
“After that I went to Castle Douglas High for S1 to S4 – the school was just a junior secondary then – and to Dumfries Academy for fifth and sixth year – where I played the violin to get out of going to PE!”
Armed with a fine set of Highers, in 1977, Fiona tells me, she set off for the capital to study law at the University of Edinburgh.
“I stayed in halls for a couple of years and a flat for a couple of years,” she says.
“I graduated with LLB and Diploma in Legal Practice and did my traineeship with John Henderson and Sons in Dumfries.
“My work was primary conveyancing, wills and probate, that kind of stuff.
“Some folk suggested to me I was burning my boats by coming back to a practice in a rural town.
“But it gave me a good grounding in time management, I was well supported and I learned the importance of a strong work ethic.”
Fiona and husband Alan, who met by chance when he visited her parents’ house one Hogmanay, were married in 1983.
She passed all her exams and qualified as a solicitor in both Scotland and England and Wales.
“Alan worked in Glasgow and I moved to the city to join Maclay Murray & Spens Solicitors, working mainly on agricultural tenancies and farming related contracts,” she says.
Two years later she was on the move again, this time to the South of Scotland Electricity Board, which in 1985 was still in public hands.
“I was attracted by the fact that they were looking for someone with agricultural law experience,” Fiona recalls.
“I did quite a lot of work in relation to the sale of properties around the Galloway Hydro Scheme, which of course was my home area.
“The SSEB owned quite a lot of farms around the central belt.
“They had bought them historically in case they needed them for power station sites.
“While they were holding them they let them out to farmers and it was my job to draw up the leases.
“I loved my time there because there was such a variety or work and got to go to sites all over their area. It was a really good organisation to work for.”
Next rung on Fiona’s career ladder was London, to where Alan had moved with his job.
“I followed Alan down, joining Central Electricity Generating Board and did two years of privatisation-related work when CEGB was split up into four parts,” she tells me.
“Those four new companies were PowerGen, National Power, Nuclear Electric and the National Grid.
“Early in the 1990s there was a huge amount of gas powered stations connecting to the grid and I did the legal work to enable these connections.
“I was in the top seven or eight people in National Grid but was only 36 or 37 years old, which was quite young to get that amount of responsibility.
“David Jones the chief executive took a bit of a risk appointing me to such a senior
job at such a young age.
“But he told me he was confident that I could do it – which was quite a positive statement when you are taking on a role like that.
“Personally speaking, that confidence in me supported me in doing the job.”
I remark that it seems a pretty jet-propelled journey from being a trainee solicitor in Dumfries to one of National Grid’s top people.
“Well, part of it is ability and part is down to being in the right place in the right time,” Fiona smiles.
“I have been very lucky in having very good people to work with and people who support you.
“That made me far more confident in my ability.
“I was appointed general counsel, company secretary and a member of the executive committee in 1995 on the listing of National Grid on the London Stock Exchange.
“In 2002, National Grid, which owned the electricity transmission system, was merging with Lattice, which owned the gas distribution network.
“I was doing the work to enable the deal – but Alan and I support Queen of the South and that weekend we ended up at Forfar on a Saturday in April to celebrate the team getting promotion.
“I had to be in Canary Wharf by 10am on the next day so the merger announcement could be made on Monday!
“It was the biggest corporate transaction in Europe that year.”
National Grid, Fiona recalls, soon began pursuing a policy of acquiring companies in the US.
“They wanted to hedge their bets and make sure they had a presence in the UK and the US so that they were not totally vulnerable to the UK side of things,” she explains.
“They thought that the US would develop and change and that National Grid’s expertise could help them move forward.
“I led the team gaining the regulatory consents in the US and made regular monthly visits there.
“The US is still a very important part of National Grid’s operations.”
Next posting for Fiona, she tells me, could not have been more different – the “highly politicised environment” of Transport for London.
“I was working for Bob Kiley, the commissioner for transport, and the city’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, who had brought Bob in after seeing how he had transformed the New York underground from a no-go area to a well used system.
“Bob had a zero tolerance towards litter and graffiti so Ken hired him to improve London’s transport network.
“I was acting commissioner for Transport for London for months in Bob’s absence and was in charge of the London Underground and buses.
“I was also heavily involved in the Olympic bid for London and was there when the London bombing happened on July 7, 2005.
“At least 50 people were killed when three bombs exploded on the tube and another on a bus.
“My role was about making sure we could plan ahead for the week after the bombs, then the week after that.”
What was the fiery socialist mayor like to work with?
“Well, Ken had an ability to grasp things and get things done and not be hide-bound by politics,” Fiona says.
“Working with him, what you saw was what you got and that did not always sit well with me. Two years was enough in that environment.”
Next stop for Fiona was Severn Trent Water, which she joined in 2006 as general counsel.
“It was in a mess so I was part of the new team sorting it out,” she explains.
“I ended up in Old Bailey pleading guilty to a criminal offence by the company and also dealt with a number of regulatory investigations.
“In addition, I dealt with the loss of water supply to 300,000 people in 100,000 houses for over a week when Mythe Water Treatment Works was flooded.
“I had been the only woman at my level at National Grid – and at Severn Trent I was the only woman at that level as well.”
Fiona smiles when asked about the most important aspects of being in a top job with three different companies.
“Well, making sure you put the right people in the right job is a start,” she says simply.
“Also doing pre-emptive work to ensure you get things right at the beginning is vital.
“That means you have a more robust business at the end – and problems are much easier to sort out if things do go wrong.”
Fiona tells me she took a year out in her early 50s and moved back to Balmaclellan, before beginning a five-year stint with NEST as general counsel in 2012 – an appointment needing approval by 10 Downing Street.
“I brought all that I had learned to that role which was critical in making auto-enrollment in pensions work,” she explains.
“I have also found my experience invaluable in working across communities to develop how Glenkens and District Trust works within our community.”
Outside work, Fiona had walked in “remote and out of the way places” in Scotland and abroad.
Mongolia, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Pakistan, Chile, Argentina and Montenegro have all been on her itinerary.
But there’s no doubt that, home, as they say, is where the heart is.
“I do like to be off the beaten track and to meet people,” she smiles.
“But despite living away my roots have always been here.
“We’ve had a home in the Glenkens since 1992 and visited regularly before moving back in 2011.
“Alan was brought up in Balmaclellan – his mum and dad were married in the house we now live in.”
