Angela Stafford
Angela Stafford is a British national who has lived and worked in Bangkok since 1995. She first came to Thailand in 1989 in connection with her work when she was the project manager for British Rail Engineering's first export order to design, manufacture and supply 20 diesel railcars to the State Railway of Thailand.Having spent many months in the country when the shipment of railcars arrived in Bangkok in 1991, she had a longing to return to live and did so in 1995 upon the invitation of the General Manager of the State Railways of Thailand, Khun Samur, who helped her to secure a job with a Thai company planning to construct a railway system in Laos which would connect the Thai railway system initially to the capital Vientiane, and in time to the southern border of China. It was an ambitious project which had been researched by WS Atkins and Balfour Beatty who had been commissioned to produce a feasibility evaluation. The timing was however unfortunate as the economic recession that hit SE Asia in 1997 put a stop to the project as finance companies were too nervous to invest. Just prior to this happening Angela had been offered a job as a project manager by an Australian railway signaling company and for the first year of the recession was relatively unaffected. In 1998 when her contract came to an end and she applied for a job at Bangkok Hospital in their newly formed international section and was appointed as their first non-Asian employee. Her role was to promote the hospital and its services to the expatriates living in Bangkok. She quickly set about joining expatriate social groups, introducing herself to key people in embassies and international schools, and recommended the hospital to join chambers of commerce for the countries they were targeting, in order to raise the awareness of the hospital. The strategy soon started to have an effect and the number of international patients using the hospital began to grow.
In 2001 Angela moved to work at BNH Hospital which had been had been taken over by the Bangkok Hospital Group. She worked for the same Director who appointed her as the Head of the International Centre again she was the first non – medical foreigner to work in the hospital. BNH Hospital, formerly known as the Bangkok Nursing Home at that time was in a transitional which involved renovation of clinics and wardrooms and a major rebranding campaign. Angela and her counterpart in the Thai Marketing Department, Khun Somruthai, played a major part in raising market awareness and establishing a brand identity and customer loyalty over the following 4 years which resulted in a healthy 30 % annual growth in patient numbers and revenue.
Between 2001 and 2005 Angela actively sought to raise her own profile in the international community believing that if she became well known by association, the hospital would become well known too. She volunteered to be on the committee of associations she belonged to and accepted roles in community groups. Over the years she has been the Secretary for the British Women's Group, a Producer of a comedy for the Bangkok Community Theatre and the President of the St George’s Society for 4 years consecutive years between 2001 — 2005.
In 2004 the directors of BNH Hospital asked Angela to think of a project that would significantly raise the hospital’s profile and reach a target audience of 1 million people. At the time an English nurse called Claire Medd was working in Angela’s team and she mentioned that when she had been a student nurse she had been involved in a 'Bed Push' fund raising activity organized by her university hospital. This activity, popular in England, was unheard of in Thailand and the idea of organizing Thailand’s first ever Bed Push was an exciting challenge. Angela and her team quickly put together a proposal and plan for the directors’ consideration which once approved was put into action. The event, BNH Hospital’s Bed Push 2004 took place on May 14th. Rather than settle for pushing 1 bed around the streets of Bangkok, BNH Hospital targeted 10 teams to join in a Bed Push Parade and made the event a fund raising activity to collect money for the Thai Red Cross "Caring Hearts for AIDS Foundation" and AIDS Research Center". In the end 22 teams from community groups, such as the British Women’s Group, the Bangkok Community Theatre and the Australian and New Zealand Women’s Group, as well as international schools, embassies and companies joined the parade and the activity raised 1.3 million baht (almost 20,000 pounds sterling) for the nominated charities. In 2005 BNH Hospital organized the second Bed Push Parade- this time attracting 45 teams and raising 1.7 million baht (25,000 pounds sterling) for the same Thai Red Cross charities.
The Bed Push events attracted 8 million bahts of free publicity in the Thai and international media which reached an estimated audience of 30 million people in Thailand and around the world. It is believed that the second event was unquestionable the largest bed push in the world. The directors deemed the event a great success and in 2004 BNH Hospital received the Thai Prime Minister’s Award for international service and the Asian Management Hospital’s Award for Brand Marketing. Perhaps the greatest honour for the directors and the hospital was being invited to the Rose Garden Palace to present the cheque for the money raised to the Patron of the Thai Red Cross charities — Princess Somsawalee.
In April 2006 Angela attended a British Women’s Group lunch at the British Club and sat next to Susan Race who was the owner of Lotus Design and Publishing Company. During their conversation Susan told Angela that she would shortly be moving back to live in her native country Australia – as her husband’s contract in Thailand had finished and he had been appointed to another project in Melbourne. Angela asked what Susan planned to do with her company. She said that she hadn’t really decided but a number of people were interested in buying her Christmas card stock and another card manufacturer had offered to act as her agent. After the lunch Angela returned to her office at BNH Hospital and thought over the possibility that she could buy the company from Susan. After several meetings and after meeting Khun Wipa from Siwat Printing Company.
Since then Angela and Khun Wipa have produced the Lotus 2007 Calendar of Thailand and are currently in the process of producing the Lotus 2008 Calendar of Thailand which will be available in August 2007. A new range of cartoon Christmas cards is also being designed to be available before the 2007 Christmas season gets underway.