There are some lives that divide into before and after.
For Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE, that moment came on 2 January 2003—the night her daughter, Letisha, was murdered in a drive-by shooting outside a New Year’s Eve party in Birmingham. Letisha was 17. Her best friend, Charlene Ellis, was also killed. Their deaths shocked the nation—and reverberated throughout Black British communities and diasporas around the world.
What followed was not silence. Not vengeance. But something far braver. Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE chose to speak. And she has never stopped.
Over the past two decades, Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE has become one of the UK’s most courageous advocates for youth violence prevention and social change. Her talks have reached over 500,000 young people, delivered in classrooms, prisons, and community halls—not with fear, but with honesty. She speaks not just of loss, but of choices. Not just of what was taken, but of what must be protected.
Through her work with the Precious Trust, which she co-founded, Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE supports girls and young women in the West Midlands who are at risk of violence, exploitation, and marginalisation. The organisation offers mentoring, education, and emotional support—building spaces where young women can grow in confidence, independence, and self-worth. It’s quiet, relentless, life-changing work.
Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE has advised national policy, partnered with police and safeguarding boards, and helped shape anti-violence strategies across the country. But her power has always come from her presence—not from behind a desk, but standing eye-to-eye with those who most need to be seen.
In 2009, she was awarded an MBE for services to the community. In 2017, she received the Pride of Birmingham Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2022, she was given an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University. These honours reflect what many already knew: that she turned the worst thing that could happen into the reason something better must.
Dr Marcia Shakespeare MBE is not defined by tragedy. She is defined by what she has chosen to build in its wake. Her voice has saved lives. Her presence has shifted culture. And her work reminds us that out of unimaginable pain, something fierce, powerful and luminous can still rise.
