Laurie-Anne Power, a 50-year-old barrister, has become a finalist at this year's Black British Business Awards after overcoming early barriers that included being excluded from school for wearing a headscarf and being told by a teacher that she had no academic future.
When Laurie-Anne was 11, she arrived for the first day of school wearing a headscarf in keeping with her Rastafarian family's culture, but was refused entry. 'The headteacher refused to allow me onto the premises with it and made me stand outside,' Laurie-Anne tells Metro. 'I was 11 years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I didn't know how to articulate it, but I knew that it felt like injustice.'
At home, she was close with her grandfather, a member of the Windrush generation who worked at the Co-op milk factory. Each evening, they watched the news together, and he eventually told her: 'God, you talk so much, you must be a lawyer when you grow up.'
Teacher's words fuel determination
As a teenager, Laurie-Anne confided in a teacher that she wanted to become a barrister but was starkly told to focus on sport. The words stung but made her more determined. 'I was probably voicing my opinion as strongly as you would need to if you were to be a lawyer, but back then it was seen as disruptive,' she says.
A wake-up call came in her final year when a history teacher pulled her out of class and told her: 'If you don't stop f***ing around, you're gonna mess your life up.' After good GCSE and A Level results, she became pregnant just after her 19th birthday, returning to studies as a single mum when her daughter was seven months old.
From barrister to international consultant
In 2000, Laurie-Anne qualified as a barrister but found the profession challenging. 'I'd say the first five years or so were me just trying to keep my head above water,' she remembers. 'I had to work twice as hard to get half as far.'
Within a decade, she began working with the United Nations-linked Special Court for Sierra Leone as a consultant on child soldiers and sexual slavery during the country's civil war. In 2011, her son Noah was born extremely prematurely at 25 weeks, spending a year in neonatal intensive care, leading Laurie-Anne to step away from work to care for him.
She eventually found a way to balance both, saying: 'When there is a time for me to put the job on the back burner and be there for my children, there's no case on Earth that's going to stop that. There's no judge that's going to stop me.'
A full-circle moment and ongoing fight for equality
A few years ago, shortly after taking silk in 2022, Laurie-Anne saw one of her former teachers outside the Old Bailey. 'Although now in his early 80s, I immediately knew that it was him. It's safe to say that he was as shocked to see me in my barrister robes,' she wrote for Counsel Magazine in 2024. 'Our conversation was pleasant but what I really wanted to say was "Look at me now!"'
Laurie-Anne has since made it part of her career to help others from similar backgrounds enter the profession, though it has come at a personal cost. She has 'lost friends and gained allies' in her pursuit of equality, challenging those who refuse to accept disparities exist. 'I think the Bar is changing. It's far more accessible than it used to be. But we still have a long way to go,' she says.
As a finalist at the Black British Business Awards, which will announce winners on October 9, 2026, Laurie-Anne says: 'I'm very proud to be even just to be considered in the same breath as some of these extraordinary women. I would never have been able to even perceive that that was possible, 27 years ago.'
