Karen Hester had no thought of becoming a manager when she started a cleaning job at Adnams, the British brewer based in the seaside town of Southwold. “I wanted evening work, so my children wouldn’t miss out during the day,” she says. Twenty-six years on, she runs Adnams’ entire operations and is about to join its board.
Her potential was spotted after she became a purchasing clerk simply bec¬ause she needed to change her hours when her children started school − “there had been no complaints about the cleaning”. In her new role, she met Andy Wood, now chief executive but then supply chain head. Im¬pressed by how she project managed the purchase of his company car, he asked about her background. When he discovered she had qualified to drive heavy goods vehicles as a 17-year-old army recruit, and gained two promotions in record time, he persuaded her to join the transport division and became her mentor.
“Karen wasn’t an obvious model for a future business leader, but she displayed a tenacity, an inquisitiveness and willingness to learn that marked her out,” Mr Wood says.