By Rosemary Squire

Paula Baker was born in Guildford in 1964 and grew up in Kent. She began her career as a legal secretary in Maidstone at the dawn of computerisation. She and her husband Kevin moved to Woking in early 1992 and Paula and I started working together soon after.

I initially worked with Paula as my PA and a key and trusted member of the founding ATG Admin team. Then, more recently, at Trafalgar Entertainment from June 2016 – before the company was even formed. In total we were colleagues and friends for over 27 years. In those early years at ATG, Paula was a rock in a fragile but ambitious new business and took pride in getting to know everyone; all 27 shareholders, and as she also initially looked after HR as well, all the hundreds of staff too.  

She worked as my PA at ATG for many years, taking a short maternity leave when her son Matthew was born in 1993 and a career break when her daughter Emily was born in 2000, returning again to job share with my other PA a few years later. From then she worked regularly one or two days a week in addition to covering holidays and absences. We had lots of babies in the admin team! She and her family helped me out many times taking care of my youngest at weekends if I needed to work as the pressure built in the lead up to selling ATG in 2009. 

Paula had true entrepreneurial spirit – there was nothing she would shy away from – and was proud to have painted the cinema kiosk the day before we opened and to have directed traffic with colleagues in high vis jackets on the frantic charity panto matinees when dozens of Variety Club minibuses full of over-excited children gridlocked with Christmas shoppers. She was incredibly organised and relished setting up systems – some of which, including her day file, survive to this day.

Outside of work, Paula was a devoted wife to Kevin, and loving mother to Matthew and Emily, facilitating and supporting all their various activities and making a wonderful stable home for them all. Paula was also a keen and talented sportswoman and had a passion for horses, spending all the time she could riding her beloved horse, Tali. 

Rest in peace, Paula. We miss you enormously.