Marie Danby is customer operations director at Freedom Fibre and is responsible for leading service operations, marketing, comms, and PR.
Danby also works with Freedom Fibre’s partners to ensure customers receive the highest levels of service as the company rolls out its full-fibre broadband across the North West and West Midlands.
With over 20 years of experience in the UK telecoms industry, she was previously service director at TalkTalk, leading the end-to-end service operations function and delivered a customer experience strategy.
Here, she shares a recent week in her life…
Monday
I usually like to wake up bright and early around 6am with a quick glance of my emails and agenda for the day ahead. My children are always up early; I usually drop them off on the school run at 8.15am – a great start to my day.
Each day brings change and it’s rare that each day is the same as the previous. My priorities are always aligned to our commitments to our customers, with the start of my week focussing on our operational performance as a business and our sales projections for the week and month ahead, making sure that we set ourselves up for success to deliver against our commitments – always striving to do better and to challenge the status quo.
2025 presents huge opportunities with key projects going live that will create growth and scalability for the business. My current focus is streamlining and expanding Freedom Fibre’s operation capabilities – as a fibre broadband network operator it’s crucial that we continuously innovate, making sure that we put our customers at the heart of everything that we do.
At Freedom Fibre we have the continued luxury of hybrid working and on Mondays I tend to work from home, or I alternate to visit our Stoke site to catch up with our installation engineers. If working from home, lunchtime is a perfect opportunity for taking my dog Freddie for a walk – taking the time to get away from the computer for some fresh air is crucial.
After an afternoon of busy meetings and catching up with priorities for the week ahead, the biggest highlight of my day is picking the children up from school – Monday is a late finish for them with all their extra curricula activities – and I love hearing all about their day. A healthy work-life balance is important to me; family always comes first.
After finishing work, I usually take my daughter swimming. She’s a keen competitive swimmer, and it’s great cheering her on from the side of the pool. Whilst my daughter is training for two hours, I often go for a long run (weather permitting) which helps set me up for the week ahead.
Tuesday
On Tuesday we have our senior leadership team meeting in which we discuss the upcoming key business updates and future direction. Directors from other departments including build, networks, project management, finance, and health and safety, update us all on progress and team changes so that we’re aligned on our long-term focus. The senior leadership team feel confident to challenge each other, reflecting a mutual respect in determining the future of the business.
A key part of my role is making sure to work in close partnership with our ISP partners such as TalkTalk and Zen Internet – relationships are built on mutual trust, and it’s great to work closely together with them and asking our retail partners what support they need from Freedom Fibre as the wholesaler. We currently work with over 10 different ISP partners, making sure that we offer our customers as much choice and freedom as possible – building and maintaining these relationships requires us to be genuine and approachable.
Wednesday
On Wednesday I work from our Irlam office – I leave the house at 7am aiming to get to the office for 8am. Our marketing team presented our marketing and communications plans for the first quarter of 2025. Identifying what has worked well via our paid and organic strategies, events, and public relations activity is great and it’s a never-ending task to make improvements to reach the right end users. As a wholesaler we have a unique message, and I love seeing the creative ideas that my colleagues have come up with.
Throughout my career, my strategy has always been to surround myself with great people that have expertise within different areas which creates a great culture. My colleagues are team players who embrace our values and it’s a great privilege to work as a team to think up new ideas or approaches to challenges.
To support awareness and to answer any queries from customers, our marketing team headed off to Shropshire to deliver a resident engagement event and arranged for our first customer to meet with the local MP. This customer-centric approach is key.
Thursday
I sometimes work from home on a Thursday. I live in a lovely little village and am reminded of the importance of Freedom Fibre’s work in rolling out full-fibre broadband to rural areas – it’s crucial that rural areas are well connected to help boost economic growth and encourage entrepreneurship in the countryside.
With my job role’s focus on strategy, I enjoy seeing Freedom Fibre’s longer-term projects that make a real lasting impact in the communities we operate in. I caught up with Wigan Council to see how the fibre internet connection we provided at Higher Folds Community Centre was helping residents with tasks such as accessing resources online, paying their bills, and running their in-house food bank.
I also enjoyed hearing updates from our previous Freedom Fund winners – it’s an initiative we’ve been running for the last few years, in which non-profit community groups can apply for grants to fund environmental projects. I’m looking forward to seeing what applicants we receive this year.
Friday
Friday is ‘my day’, with Freedom Fibre being great at promoting hybrid working and flexible work hours. I’m lucky to work four days a week, making Friday’s the perfect start to the weekend. I catch up with a last glance at my emails and I may attend some of our end-of-week project meetings to celebrate progress we have made during our working week. To end the week my family and I sometimes drive down south to get away to Cornwall. We love visiting the peninsula, and I relish being able to spend time to relax and recharge by the coast with my children in this beautiful part of the world. A glass of prosecco and a barbecue on the beach after a day of surfing or exploring – a perfect end to a busy week!
