Women in power - Lesleyanne

I’m Lesleyanne, and I joined SSE five years ago in our Perth HQ. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school, so following and HND in Business Admin I tried a number of back office roles – you name it I’ve tried it, so it was great experience. Then I’ve had a varied and interesting career before moving to this role at SSE, which I love.

My career really started when I joined General Accident as an Admin Assistant, moving fairly quickly to commercial underwriting. I then became part of a change programme and that brought me into contact with IT and Business Support, moving to London and then to Perth to support companies like Ford and HSBC. That’s where I really started to get technical with large scale platforms. I moved to RBS as a Senior Analyst after 13 years with General Accident. I spent a couple of years there before being headhunted to join Tesco Bank in Edinburgh as a new start up, so I joined as PMO Lead for Infrastructure. Tesco Bank was a period of immense change, building systems from the ground up – infrastructure, processes, and policies. It was an amazing eight years, but it was time for a change – I’d worked a lot of hours and it was time to take a step back as I needed to support my daughter’s education. At that point the role in SSE came up. It was a Senior Project Manager based in Perth working in Renewables & Thermal.

The career support at SSE has been great. I’ve had some very supportive managers and you can speak to people really easily here and be listened to. Back when I started there were not that many women in senior roles in IT, and I was used to being the only woman in the room. But that’s changing rapidly at SSE, and you can see female role models all over the business. I’m An Inclusion & Diversity Ambassador at SSE, leading for Women in Tech, which I am passionate about – it’s about encouraging people to apply, particularly women, who can think that they need to tick all the boxes to apply for roles that they would be a great fit for. We look for what we you can do rather than what you can’t.

SSE have put a lot of faith in me and it’s humbling to hold a senior position in IT with the responsibilities and influencing opportunities available. It shows what you can achieve here with the right attitude and SSE’s support.

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