Aer Rianta International | Women in Business
Belief to
Succeed Nicola Wells, Director of Customer Strategy and Marketing for ARI, part of daa Group, reflects on the main barriers facing women in business and offers an inspirational quote on the topic. Firstly, can you tell me about your background in business? After graduation I worked for 11 years in the UK in sales and marketing roles in Mars and Britvic before moving back to Ireland to take up the role of Head of Marketing at Pepsico Ireland Food & Beverages. I first came to daa (ARI parent company) in a consultancy capacity working across various areas of the commercial business before moving to ARI and the global retail business.
What does your current role entail? As Director of Customer Strategy and Marketing my role is to ensure that the customer is at the heart of all we do and drives our retail and buying strategy. As a central support, the team and I work with all locations to deliver customer and category insights in order to build strategies which will drive revenue. Building a global customer, category and market insights hub has been critical along with building our competence in category management and retail marketing.
What do you see as the main barriers facing women in business? On a practical level a lack of flexible working sometimes means that women have to step out of the workplace or stand still and that is a loss to both the individual and the business as there is a lot of knowledge and expertise lost. On a behaviourial level, belief and confidence can be a barrier particularly in very male-dominated industries.
Industry attitude to women in certain roles can also have an impact if they are seen as not 'tough' enough to be credible or more suited to the traditional female roles in HR or marketing. Finally, women seem to get promoted based on having proven themselves versus men who are promoted based on future potential and this can be discouraging and frustrating for women in the workplace.
Do you feel there are enough female role models in more senior executive roles? I believe that it should be about the right person for the job regardless of gender and that the actual issue is that that talent pool of women for these roles is too shallow. This is because we lose these women at middle management level and more needs to be done by businesses to encourage, coach and retain these women.
Would you have any advice for women either currently involved in business in some capacity, or perhaps considering it? Perseverance and resilience are key skills, plus you should understand your strengths and play to them. From this will
Nicola Wells, Director of Customer Strategy and Marketing, ARI, part of daa Group.
come the belief and confidence to succeed. Women can bring much needed dynamics to a team in terms of culture, organisation and people skills and should not be underrated. Look for flexibility where you need it. Demonstrate how it can work for the business and the individual. There is a great quote – “You can tell who the strong women are. They are the ones you see building each other up instead of tearing each other down”. Basically if you are on the up, don’t pull the ladder up after you!
"Women can bring much needed dynamics to a team in terms of culture, organisation and people skills and should not be underrated. Look for flexibility where you need it. Demonstrate how it can work for the business and the individual." InBusiness | Q1 2014 51