Management Consultant
PricewaterhouseCoopers

Sara C

00:02 My name’s Sara C and I’m a Director at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, working in management consultancy.

00:08 Management Consultancy is really about helping people and organisations to solve problems. Improve in their performance, or in implementing a new initiative and my role is within the advisory part of it, so not everybody that works there is an accountant.

00:25 My father was from a Lithuanian immigrant family, no one in the family had been to University before. I was quite clever at school and did well and they just thought that I was in control and you know they trusted my decisions.

00:41 They were in the fashion business my parents, so they had clothes shops.

00:47 My father got Alzheimer’s when I was 15, so that was quite a life changing experience. I was still at school, obviously before I did my A levels. My sister was only 11 and that had a big impact on the family and my mother died when I was 25, which is a bit longer but, by that time my father was in a care home and I was sort of in charge of the family, in a way, because there was just me and my sister left then and I think what that did for me was make me realise that I had to be able to stand on my own two feet and it made me really quite independent in terms of, my career.

01:26 But when I was at school the two subjects I really loved were maths and Latin and my teachers said you’re a science based person, keep your options open and, so I chose to do Maths, physics, chemistry and biology, so I started down that A level route, but while I was doing it I realised that the thing I was really interested in was maths, so because I had absolutely no idea what sort of job I wanted to do I just decided that because it was maths that I liked, maths was what I would do as a degree, but by the time I finished the degree, I was a bit fed up with maths. So, I applied for completely different sorts of jobs and ended up being the first graduate trainee that Fenwick’s in Bond Street took on, so I moved down to London, because I’d been in Newcastle and, and did that, so I went to work in a department store.

02:16 And having to serve customers did me the absolute world of good, because I had to talk to people, there was choice. It really brought me out of my shell.

02:26 I transferred with Fenwick’s, back up to Fenwick’s in Newcastle where I was, the assistant buying in pets and cleaning, DIY and large and small electricals, which was, it sounds really boring but actually again I learnt so many different skills. I did that for about a year and a half and then I saw an advert in the paper for an assistant logistics manager for a nappy manufacturer. Did the application form, had an interview, got the job and learnt all about manufacturing.

02:55 I became a pub manager. Because at the time I was married and my husband wanted a job that enabled him to look after his children cos he had custody of his children, so we decided to train as pub managers. Whilst also doing the pub I started to do the part time lecturing in maths and I really enjoyed that. I then extricated myself from the pub and started to do more part time lecturing, and then that led to me getting a full job at the college. I did that for a couple of years then I became head of the business school at the college and I really learnt a lot about leadership and management in that role, then, while I was doing that job KMPG who are another big four firm came in to do a review and asked me if I’d be interested in, in working for them.

03:46 I think that’s why I’ve done so many different jobs, it’s all been about what do I enjoy, or what do I think’s going to give me a challenge, not about a vision for where I wanted to be.

03:55 Apart from 3 years of my life I’ve always lived in the North East, it hasn’t, that hasn’t had any effect on my career at all, I can work anywhere from the North East.

04:05