My story
Having left University with a degree in Music, I fell into my first recruitment job as a temporary stop-gap and have remained in the industry ever since. I worked my way up through the ranks at one of the leading Plcs, having quickly realised that Interim Management was what I enjoyed most, and became their worldwide top performing consultant. I then moved on to head up the interim retail and consumer division at a boutique provider before setting up my own business. After 10 successful years as Managing Partner/Head of Interim and 2 children later, I decided that I wanted a new challenge and I found Savannah. I was looking for an organisation that operates with integrity and truly consults with the businesses they work with. I also wanted to find a young organisation that had an entrepreneurial feel to it so that I could once again feel the excitement of growing a business without restriction.
My focus
I have spent most of my career operating in the interim space within Finance, Retail and Consumer Markets and Operations. My role at Savannah is to build out the Interim Operational Leaders division, across industries. The types of roles I recruit for are Chief Operating Officer, Manufacturing Director, Transformation Director, Supply Chain Director and Chief Procurement Officer. I work with any organisation seeking to improve the performance of their operations from a cost and efficiency perspective; typically these organisations will be listed businesses with complex supply chains or private equity-backed portfolio businesses where fast results are required for critical business issues.
My motivation
I am truly passionate about what I do – I loved it from the moment I realised that it wasn’t a sales job but a role that requires you to understand people and to be able to dissect complex problems. I have always strongly advocated the need to work with integrity and honesty and this is why organisations return to work with me – they trust what I am saying and believe in my ability to understand their business and recommend solutions to the problems their organisations are facing. I really enjoy the fact that I get to work with some of the world’s best businesses in the capacity of a true consultant.
I also have a personal interest in understanding what makes people tick and how people think, and I believe that this has contributed significantly to my success in this industry. Emotional intelligence and ability to understand people are things that I continually work on and I am increasingly asked by my clients to provide insight and opinion on personality fit and potential value-add in regards to “softer € skills as well as detail on practical experiences: in past years this perhaps hasn’t been deemed so important in the world of interim management, but the world is changing in this regard.
Why I like working at Savannah
Savannah is one of the world’s leading forward-thinking Executive Search and Interim providers and I feel honoured to be working with such a talented and authentic group of people. It isn’t easy to create an energetic and creative, yet professional recruitment environment where everyone genuinely works towards the best solution for the client, irrespective of personal gain, but Savannah have done it and I am so pleased to be a part of that. When I was going through the interview process, I asked one of the Partners what the vision for the business was and she replied, “we just want to be the best that we can be – excellence in what we do is paramount.” My question was broad and invited potential responses around monetary targets or numbers of employees – this answer told me that the company values were absolutely spot on. Savannah understands that the rest follows.