Associate Director, Strategic Alliances
Fidelity International

Penny T

00:00:02 My name is Penny T, and I’m responsible for Distribution Service Management. It’s great to meet other people, it’s really good to work with them to try and improve a process, or to improve something, because that’s one of the key fundamentals of what we’re looking to do, is improve processes

00:01:02 I really enjoyed primary school and then I went to a school that was just a little bit away from where most of my friends went as a secondary school. I really didn’t enjoy it very much at all I’m afraid. So I didn’t do hugely well at school, it has to be said. After my O levels I went to college to study Health – Health Studies, which was a course designed for pre-nursing. I thoroughly enjoyed that and I did really well, but decided not to go into nursing. I think it was one of the things that made me realise I didn’t actually want to be a nurse. I think it was a lot of running round with bed pans, and clearing up, and doing those sorts of things, and really I guess that wasn’t – it was the cleaning up kind of thing round people that wasn’t really for me, I felt at the time. What I perhaps regret is that I didn’t go to University. I’ve subsequently thought well OK what I didn’t get at University I’ve probably taught myself in slightly different ways, but it would I think have been beneficial to have that formal – formal education after school and college.

00:01:25 After the – after the nursing course I went on to work for Boots, I think it was, Boots the Chemist, in retail. I did it for about a year and a half, and I think it was sort of a game, it never really played to my potential, so I always felt that it was – it was good fun, but it was really not too much like work. And I felt that I had to knuckle down and perhaps stretch myself a little bit further. So that’s when, following from Boots, I went to work for British Telecom within a clerical position, as a Clerical Officer. It was a good stepping stone actually to go from retail into there, because I could use some of my experiences in terms of customer services and selling, but within more of an office environment.

00:02:14 I got talked into going into recruitment by a Recruitment Consultant, and I worked there for about fifteen months, and I have to say it was probably the hardest job, and for me not a pleasant experience at all. It was very, very hard, very cut-throat, I thought. I decided no, enough’s enough. I applied for a job at Fidelity, and was very successful and got the job. Financial Services is obviously, for good or for bad, a very rapidly changing, you know, volatile industry to be in. And I loved that, I loved the change, and I loved the ethic of the company, which was always to look for continuous ways of improving processes, or the ways we service – the way we service customers etcetera.

00:03:01 The high points have certainly been, I think, first of all being given an operational area to run myself. To be given that opportunity to actually run my own area was a real highlight, and it was great to have other people have faith in me. I probably didn’t have as much confidence in – as other people had, in my own ability at that time. I think my outlook is that I really feel very, very strongly about looking at life very positively, looking at life as always being opportunities that are happening and that, you know, keeping your glass half full. To – you know, to really look at things – don’t be a victim, don’t think things are happening to you, make change happen for yourself. And I think that’s really, really important.

00:03:47 ENDS