Get to Know - Tilly Bacon

Tilly Bacon is Chief Operating Officer at St Mellitus College

Tell us a bit about yourself

My name’s Tilly Bacon, I’m married to Jonathan and we have two children – Lula and Hux. I grew up in London and thought I’d be a Londoner for life, but we moved to Leighton Buzzard in 2017 to be near my husband’s family and I haven’t looked back since! Family is very important to me. I am one of six children, with three older sisters and two younger brothers and my favourite thing is when we all get together – a rare event nowadays, but it happened recently – 27 of us with my mum, siblings their husbands / wives and children and it was beautifully chaotic and a foretaste of heaven.

I came to work at St Mellitus College in 2016 to oversee operations, bringing experience in administration as a PA, people and event management from my time working at HTB Alpha, and operational and HR experience at a start-up. I love looking back and seeing how God has woven together all the threads and incorporated them in my current role.

What is your faith story?

I grew up going to church every Sunday with prayerful parents who read me bible stories at bedtime. I remember being at church when I was about 8 and there was a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit week after week. I would come back from the kids’ group and literally have to step over people lying all around the church, so overcome were they by the awesome power of the Holy Spirit. This was normality for me.

Then at aged 10 I was at a church holiday camp and my superhero father went off to play squash one morning and never came back. He’d suffered a heart attack and my whole reality was shaken. I knew I had a choice – to blame God and turn away from him, or embrace him tighter than ever before as the Father who would never leave me. I chose the latter.

Why St Mellitus College?

I love so much about working at St Mellitus College – I get to work with a phenomenal team of people every day. With the last few years and the switch to working remotely through the pandemic and the reduction in social interactions, these wonderful colleagues became some of my closest friends. Secondly, the admin-lover in me adores the cyclical nature of working in education and the fact that we get the opportunity to improve what we do and how we do it with each week, or term or year - a great thrill. And finally, the driving force that gets me out of bed each day is the multiplication factor – the knowledge that my work contributes to the lives of our students who go on to impact the lives of thousands of people up and down the country, preaching the good news and transforming society.

What are you hoping and expectant for in your role?

My hope is that through my role, everyone who works at St Mellitus College becomes more of who God made them to be the longer they are on the team, that they get to use latent God-given gifts and discover the potential that God has put in them through their work. That’s what makes me want to recruit someone that is a great fit for a role; that’s what gets me excited about admin when we find wonderful ways of getting the best outcome on a project; that’s what makes me able to rejoice when someone decides it’s time to move on from the team because I am expectant for the continuation of the work God has been doing in their life and excited about the doors he is opening for them; that’s what makes me want to serve my team to the best of my ability to enable each of them to flourish and to discover the gold that God has put in each one of them.

What are you passionate about?

I am passionate about productivity! I love finding and sharing wonderful shortcuts to achieving an end result. I love that penny-dropping moment in someone when they realise that something they thought would take hours of their life can be achieved in a few clicks. I love helping people discover systems to bring reliable organisation to their lives.

I also love personality profiles. I love the self-revelation that they bring, each in a slightly different way; I love that it is possible to understand people better when you have a good grasp on how a personality profile works – to understand their preferences, their motivations, the types of situations that will make them thrive. I love that they expose people’s uniquenesses and the richness of God’s creation and I love it when a team, with all its variety, works together in unison and ‘the whole body…grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work’ (Ephesians 4:16).

What would you say to someone considering studying theology or exploring their vocation?

I honestly believe there is nowhere better to study theology than at St Mellitus College! The enthusiasm and wisdom that each tutor exudes is utterly infectious; I am always learning when I’m around them. Plus, you just have to walk through the doors on a teaching day and you can’t help but feel instantly uplifted and hopeful for the future of the Church. If you don’t know what I mean, just come and see!

And finally, for something unexpected…

When I was 12 years old, I watched Much Ado About Nothing and asked my mother, ‘Where is that set? I want to go there!’ She replied, ‘That’s Tuscany. You’d have to learn Italian to go there.’ With that comment, my competitive spirit flared into action and inspired a dream in me which led me to study Italian at Leeds University and live in Milan, Florence and Verona. I adore Italy – the food, the people, the language, the history, the literature, the scenery. I can’t wait to go back there one day.