Lisa in the Media

How Principal Lisa began

Happy Families With Principal Lisa on Pearl FM

It started quite by accident.

I had been talking a lot on Instagram, helping families within my nursery. Somebody reached out, and I went for a meeting at the Al Jalila Cultural Centre for Children. I was offered the chance to have a radio show at 6pm, twice a week, recorded on a Sunday. I thought, what a fun idea. I want to give that a go! I went into a studio, and everybody did everything for me.

Then COVID hit, and I was asked to come back into the studio and do a daily radio show to help families. He said, "Do you have an Instagram?" I said, "No, no, no, I've only got the nursery." He said, "You'd better have one." What should we call the show? He decided: "Well, you are a principal at the moment, so let's call it Happy Families with Principal Lisa."

Recording through COVID was extremely difficult. For part of it, I came into an empty studio with no one there, and I had to control the buttons myself. Then things got harder, and I was recording the show from home. We were all doing the best we could.

As things got better, I went in every day and recorded for an hour, with four guests every hour to help families. It was really popular. The show was sponsored by Mumzworld, and it ran until 2021, when the Al Jalila Cultural Centre closed Pearl FM down.