Please provide us with a picture of yourself
Question 1: Tell us about your current role (please provide your job title) and what you enjoy most about it?
Answer: I’m Senior Financial Governance Assessor for London and 3 other regions. The roles were created to ensure that financial governance is taken into account when CQC review Trust well-led arrangements. I’m embedded in CQC visiting teams – and am also invited to make assessments by regional colleagues when they think an external lens on governance would be helpful. I also chair a couple of NHS audit committees: one in a big acute trust, and one in an ICB.
Question 2: Can you describe your career story?
Answer: I’ve had a really interesting and challenging career. I was Solihull MBC’s first graduate trainee in the late 70s and have been breaking glass ceilings ever since. I left local government for a stint in consulting and returned to public service in the NHS in the 90s. I suppose I’m a specialist CFO in very highly financially challenged Trusts. I went freelance in the late 90s after my CIPFA presidential year (more glass ceilings!) and enjoy a portfolio of professional activities, including leading CIPFA’s activities on ethics; and coaching and mentorships.
Question 3: Were there any role models who gave you a sense of what it is to be a leader or helped you on your journey?
Answer: Lots. I was elected to CIPFA Council as the first woman in the 80s where there were a lot of senior (male) Treasurers and public finance leaders who were extraordinarily generous and supportive. I owe them.
Question 4: What barriers have you faced in your career and how did you overcome them?
Answer: You have to disregard the barriers and just get on with life. Stick with Integrity, Determination and Humour.
Question 5: How have you balanced the competing needs of a modern leadership role? How would you define a modern leadership role (e.g. what skills are required)?
Answer: Integrity, Determination and Humour. There’s also something about being reliable – people need to know where you’re coming from and what you really won’t like / put up with. Although that’s a negative, it’s an easier sell than defining what you DO like – much more difficult as so much depends on context.
Question 6. The theme for International Women’s Day this year is #InspireInclusion – How are you inspiring inclusion?
Answer: I mentor a lot of people to help them work through how they can be the very best they can be. And they are!
Question 7: have you been interviewed/does your organisation interview explicitly use a value-based approach below executive level?
Answer: Values are key. Effective leadership is people-based and the ability to build and sustain relationships is key.
Question 8. What do you enjoy doing outside of the working week?
Answer: I am blessed with great friends.