Dedication and Opportunity

In 2018, Carole-Anne Simpson was one year into a new role as an HR Business Partner at Spirit Prestwick. She was also raising two children and coaching her daughter's football (i.e., "soccer") team. That would be enough for many to keep busy, but Carole-Anne thought otherwise. Spurred on by a desire to try something new, she chose to take on a grueling University degree that would ultimately change her career trajectory for the better.

Carole-Anne grew up in Stepps, Scotland, a small village just outside the east end of Glasgow. She enjoyed living in a close-knit community while also being close to the bustling center of Scotland's second-largest city. Carole-Anne spent the early part of her career in HR roles at food companies, including the bakery giant Hovis. During this time, she agreed to lend a hand to her daughter's football team.

"It's a fulfilling feeling. When you are helping younger girls, you're seeing their confidence grow. You've seen them develop into better players, so it's just a really rewarding volunteer experience," she says.

When Carole-Anne decided the commute to Motherwell-where Hovis was located-was too long, she looked for a job closer to home and found the Spirit Prestwick opportunity. This first career shift was the catalyst for her to pursue the university program and explore different career opportunities.

A career-changing decision

Carole-Anne enrolled in a four-year graduate apprenticeship course in business management at Strathclyde University. After years of putting her children first, now that they were a little older, she wanted to pursue something for herself, even though her family would ultimately benefit. Carole-Anne also wanted to expand her skill set so she could take advantage of the many opportunities offered at Spirit. The government funded the course, and four other Spirit employees joined her. They worked four and a half days a week and studied in the evenings and weekends. Not long before the final year of her degree, Carole-Anne got the perfect opportunity to put what she'd learned into practice.

"The business management role at Spirit, coincidentally came up within about my third year at university," Carole-Anne says. "I just thought that it aligned really well with my studies, so I'll give that a try. I'd wanted to try something different, and I wanted more exposure to the wider business."

When the fourth year of university rolled around, Carole-Anne juggled her dissertation, a new role at Spirit, family and coaching responsibilities. "It was a great period of time. I wouldn't have changed it. At times, stress levels were very high, but it was a great experience. I would recommend it to anyone," she says.

Studying leadership roles

Carole-Anne graduated with first-class honors and excelled in her new role as business manager a position she still holds today. She says the role gives her a broader view of the business compared to her previous role in HR.

"I'm getting exposure to all the different areas within the business, which gives me an overall better business acumen, and I think I'm more commercially aware," Carole-Anne says. "And that's really why I made the move."

In her role, Carole-Anne's day-to-day activities can vary greatly. She reports to the business management team, but her daily to-do's come from the VP of Supply Chain, which means her tasks can range from collating and analyzing data from all over the globe, to improving processes, to ensuring the supply chain team has everything it needs to excel. She describes her current role as a hybrid between data analyst and project management.

As a business manager, Carole-Anne deploys the leadership skills she has acquired throughout her career, both in and out of the office. Her football coaching, where she mentors teenage girls, has taught her patience and how to employ different communication methods for different personalities. While some of her team learn better by being shown what to do, others prefer to discuss situations and be guided in their decisions.

Carole-Anne's business management degree exposed her to the very nature of leadership and, in her dissertation, she examined the differences in the leadership styles of men and women.

"It was really about transformational leadership styles versus transactional leadership styles. Transformational is more collaborative and listening and communication. Transactional is more 'I will tell you what to do,'" Carole-Anne says. "Both men and women adopted transformational and transactional leadership styles, the women were just slightly more aligned to transformational leadership. I think women just prefer collaborative decision making."

Carole-Anne has continued studying leadership since earning her degree and says that over time, management styles have moved from transactional to transformational and now towards servant leadership. This is when a leader focuses more on the needs of their team rather than their own. She says her management style is a mix of transformational and servant because, as a leader, "you're there to look after your team, not the other way around."

Making a difference

Carole-Anne is happy in her role but has one eye on the future. She enjoys working with the supply chain team and is keen to learn as much as possible from them.

"I work with a global team, so it's great to understand the different cultures and the different challenges they experience," Carole-Anne says. "There's so much knowledge to gain here, which is great."

She also enjoys community work through Spirit and has been involved in many charity drives, raising around £33,000 thus far this year. Carole-Anne also serves on the inclusion committee where she helps drive initiatives to raise awareness of diversity and inclusion topics such as mental health, menopause, men's health and women in leadership.

"At Prestwick, we celebrate International Women's Day every year and organize events related to women in leadership. And over the years we have been trying to get more women engaged in the engineering and operations sides of the business. It's really important to introduce girls to STEM at an early age so they know what subjects they need to pick in high school" Carole-Anne says.

"We organized an 'invite your daughter to work' day. The girls spent half a day in Prestwick doing tours of the operational areas, participating in engineering activities, then learning about the different roles we have at the site."

A final word

Carole-Anne has made many sacrifices and put in more work than most to get where she is in her career. That work has paid off, and she's successfully risen the ranks and explored new areas of interest. Now, when she looks ahead, she feels ready for the next chapter.

"I would like to progress to the next level in my career," Carole-Anne says. "I'd say I'm ready. Everything I've learned in the past two and a half years in business management, I'm ready to put that into practice and try to make a difference."