Mentor Jessica Huie’s new edition self-help book Purpose out November 9

Getting inside a lift with Simon Cowell and working with celebrities like Meghan Markle and Kelly Rowland may seem to many people the highlight of their life, writes Francesca Casonato.

But that’s not true for west London-born Jessica Huie, 41, one of the most acclaimed female entrepreneurs in London, who gave it all up to be a mother and a business mentor.

Ms Huie has worked for one of the biggest PR agencies in the UK, managed to start her own PR company, the JHPR, and founded the first inclusive card business, Color Blind.

The steps that brought Jessica to Simon Cowell’s elevator door started in a council estate house in Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill, where she grew up.

She said: “My teen years were tougher.

Council estates where crack cocaine and prostitution were wrecking young lives, and multimillion-pound homes which existed in bubbles metres away.

That juxtaposition can be challenging when you are still discovering who you are.”

Jessica said that this helped shape her future.

She said: “Overall, I have huge love for Westbourne Park, so much talent and strength and creativity emerged from there and I’ve no doubt that the contrast we were able to experience played a part in fuelling that.”

At 15, Jessica was expelled from school for stealing some trainers and at 17 she got pregnant with her first child, Monet, who is now 22.

The turning point in her life were the evening classes she attended at City of Westminster in Maida Vale.

She said: “That year spent doing my A-levels was one of huge discipline and determination. It built my character and I discovered that strength had always lived inside of me.”

It was thanks to those classes, that in 1999, she was able to land a job in one of the biggest PR agencies at the time, Max Clifford Associates.

She still recalls her first day, when she accidentally ran into Simon Cowell in an elevator and he asked her if she could sing.

Jessica said: “I met him again. Many times.

Simon was always a lovely and super down to earth man who genuinely championed those who needed a break.

“He has a huge heart and it was always good fun to work with him.

Those weekly trips to watch the X Factor backstage when my daughter was young were a lovely perk of the job.”

After founding her own business and working with celebrities like Kelly Rowland and Meghan Markle, she was awarded an MBE in 2014 for her contribution to diversity.

But her life was suddenly put on halt by the death of her father in 2016.

She said: “It was a profound time. Being present with my dad unlocked something in me – the decision to lean into my grief.

I discovered what becomes available to us when we’re courageous enough to feel. And this has been a theme in the new chapters of my book.”

From that moment, Jessica decided to use her personal and professional experience to help other entrepreneurs to “strip back to their true self”, writing Purpose, a self-help book, in 2018.

From her new house in Montego Bay, Jamaica, she has written five extra chapters for her book’s new edition, coming out on November 9.

She said: “This book is the gift that keeps on giving.

It taught me that when we are brave enough to show ourselves, we open up to real interaction and connection.

“I keep receiving the most beautiful messages from people who got inspired by it.

“And the new chapters are a continuation and a deepening of this journey.”