One experienced PA has all to play for at the home of English football. Iwona Tokc-Wilde talks to Emma Kernan-Staines, PA to Sir Trevor Brooking CBE and Gareth Southgate.

“I’m from Portsmouth but never know what Pompey’s latest score is, which Trevor finds mildly amusing,” says Emma Kernan-Staines, referring to her hometown’s troubled club and her boss, Sir Trevor Brooking, a footballing legend, former chairman of Sport England and current Director of Football Development at The Football Association.

Emma wasn’t brought up with football (“it was hockey and rounders”), so “mildly amusing” was also what she felt on Sir Trevor’s first day in the office, in January 2004. “Here comes this famous sporting personality everyone is in awe of,” she recalls. “But I didn’t realise I was looking at a walking legend, so I just took things in my stride,” she says. “I might have been naive about football, but I knew what to do so that Trevor had a smooth pass into the organisation.”

The kick-off
Before scoring with the FA, Emma worked in banking, retail management, PR and advertising, in a variety of administrative and management roles. “I then realised that all the things I loved doing and was good at were encompassed in the PA role, so I decided upon that as a profession.”

With her background, Emma knew the average secretarial position wasn’t for her. “I had experience in managing projects and big teams of people and wanted a role that would challenge me and make me feel valued from a business perspective.” In September 2002, she became PA to Director of the National Game at the FA. When he left, “Trevor and I were kind of given each other to see how we got on,” she recalls. And they’ve been getting on ever since.

The goalkeeper
“We do have different personalities,” admits Emma. “Trevor’s calm and patient - he tempers my outspoken and reactionary nature. He’s a ‘let’s think about this first’ person.” She’s learnt from him how to deal with people in a win-win way and how to play the ‘long game’. In turn, Sir Trevor, who’d never had a dedicated PA before, has learnt how valuable and hugely loyal a PA can be. “He knows he can count on me,” she says, “and that I’ll go to great lengths to protect his name and his personal brand - I am a gatekeeper after all.”

What does Emma’s boss think about his safe pair of hands? “After eight years of challenges, progress and frustrations, we now have a very strong partnership, where Emma deals with a majority of daily queries and prioritises issues needing my attention,” says Sir Trevor Brooking. “In other words, I just do as I’m told!”

To read the full interview with Sir Trevor Brooking's PA Emma Kernan-Staines, subscribe to Executive PA Magazine.