To mark International Women’s Day, Ololade Adesanya, a member of the University’s Board of Trustees and Chair of the Board’s Audit and Risk Committee, shares her reflections about her mentors, turning points, and what needs to be done to create a truly diverse and equitable environment for women in business.
Throughout my career I’ve had mentors, as well as sponsors and allies. I had a mentor when I was going through the maternity phase and I was worried about juggling professional and family life. It was a pivotal moment: I was thinking about giving up on my career and focusing on childcare because it was such a lot of work. A very senior colleague had been through a similar journey, and she showed me how to ‘flex’ my career around my family commitments. I think that’s given me a longevity that I might otherwise not have had.
I’ve also gone out myself to find mentors, to coach me through progression panels and other scenarios. I’ve learned a lot from them. And these days I mentor a lot of people myself, mostly women as well as people from ethnic minority backgrounds. I’m also very passionate about increasing diversity across all sectors, and in governance positions.
A turning point
I studied law at university, then became a chartered accountant with the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales), and I was fortunate to progress quickly, but there came a point when I realised that I needed more than technical skills if I was going to get beyond a certain level. I needed the ‘soft skills’, particularly around networking and relationship-building, as well as managing 360.
I did get mentors, and I also started to watch people in the roles above me. I took away a few things from that: networking more and being more connected to community activities. These days I spend time connecting people with each other and with opportunities, going to networking events and being active on social media, to the point where some people call me the Networking Queen! I think that’s paid a lot of dividends.
Women in business: a changing landscape
We’ve made progress, but in pockets: when you look at the FTSE Board, it’s still male-dominated and with very few ethnic minorities. There’s data to prove that, but you don’t even need data – you just need to look and it’s very obvious! And it’s similar in all the senior management roles across all industries. Even in the higher education sector, particularly for the top institutions, there still isn’t that much representation of your demographics – in our case, the demographics in Bristol or in the UK overall.
I feel that there’s got to be intentional allyship – boards need to ensure that they’re getting balance. And actually our Chair, Jack Boyer, is constantly thinking about diversity on the Board of Trustees. Organisations also need to have inclusive policies in place so that the working environment allows people to be themselves, because they perform best when they’re authentic – and more importantly, they feel empowered to progress.
So how are you going to accelerate your female and your Black employees and support them to progress into senior levels? It needs representation at the top – because representation matters. A lot of research shows that, when we see people who look like us at the top, that position feels more achievable.
Fixing the ‘missing middle’
A lot of women drop out of their careers in that late-20s to mid-30s phase – the ‘missing middle’ – when many choose to become parents and start to fall off the career ladder. In some cases, working practices are just not conducive to combining career with parenting.
The advice I always give working mums that I mentor is to see your career as a rubber ball that you can amend and shape to suit your lifestyle. That might mean that you work part-time until your kids grow up, then you go back to working full-time.
I’m really pleased that a lot of employment practices are supportive of women combining work and family: there’s flexible working, and particularly post-pandemic, there’s hybrid working. Some women are fortunate to have support from their partners, and the growth of paternity leave is encouraging more men to help with childcare. I do hope that trend will encourage women to stay on in the future.
So my advice would be don’t give up. Instead of coming completely out of the system, stay on. Change your approach, change your style, change direction if you must, but don’t give up that career.