What is your current role and what do you do in it?

I am currently a Senior Vice President at AlixPartners within their Turnaround and Restructuring team and I have a particular focus on Contingency Planning and Insolvency. 

My day-to-day work is largely focused on working with clients who are in distress to rapidly create a ‘Plan B’ to either facilitate a consensual restructuring deal or deliver a well-planned rescue or controlled exit.

How did you get to where you are today? 

I started my insolvency career having originally joined EY as a Management Account for their restructuring practice. Following several months sitting alongside the client-facing teams and discovering that their work seemed far more varied and interesting than my own, I took the plunge and transferred across. Flash-forward sixteen years and I still find myself having to try and explain to friends and family what we actually do within the profession. 

I have been fortunate enough to work for a variety of firms and staffed on an assortment of complex and interesting cases, plus I was able to spend two years in Germany on secondment. All of these experiences have helped shaped me as a person and fed into my diversity journey whereby I have sat on multiple steering groups for LGBTIQA+ Employee Networks. 

Having been a sixteen-year-old school-leaver, I’m not your usual Insolvency Professional. However, that has made me passionate about broadcasting the benefits of our industry and enticing others to get involved!

Why did you become a D&I Champion? 

I have always been passionate about Diversity and Inclusion. As mentioned above, I became involved with Employee Networks early into my professional services career and it’s a role I can sought to continue for various reasons. 

From a professional perspective, I feel that Diversity and Inclusion is fundamental to our teams, our clients and the future. Having a diverse spectrum of minds and ideas within a room is not only inspirational, but it also frequently leads to better solutions being provided on projects and to our clients.  

On a personal level, being actively involved with Diversity and Inclusion has not only given me a voice, but also increased my confidence as an individual.

Which aspect of the role is most important to you and why?

I find that the most important aspect of the role is being able to champion other individuals and giving opportunities for diverse visibility and representation – providing visible role models for people that represent all walks of life.

What are the best examples of EDI initiatives you have seen in the profession?

More often I find that the best initiatives are those that are not even labelled as such. They’re being assumed into companies as day-to-day basics. However, I will always be fully supportive of school-leaver programmes that provide an additional way into professional services other than the University path.

What EDI initiatives have you benefitted from in your firm?

Reverse mentoring is a fantastic opportunity to not only build relationships with Senior members of a firm, but also to potentially alter mindsets and thinking.

What’s the one thing you would like to see the profession do differently when it comes to EDI?

I would like to see everyone challenge themselves more – nobody is perfect. We can all develop ourselves continually and challenge ourselves. “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”