Celebrating International Women’s Day – Lisa Ridge
International Women’s Day is a day for celebration and recognition of women’s achievements as well as being a day to accelerate equality and challenge stereotypes. We wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate all women at Peppermint, past, and present and inspire more women to explore career avenues into technology companies like Peppermint. Across this week we’ll be sharing the career journeys of three colleagues at Peppermint. Our first is from Lisa Ridge.
Financial Controller FCMA
Lisa is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) with 25+ years’ experience in strategic finance, leadership and programme management roles across a variety of sectors including logistics, FMCG and of course, Technology. Lisa has held roles at Director level and in her career has played a significant role in numerous large scale finance projects including managing multimillion-pound company buy outs, acquisitions and tender management
What’s important for you in your career?
For me it’s always been about working somewhere where I can make a difference. Wherever I’ve worked I’ve always been in roles where I’m building towards something – never standing still. Peppermint gave me the opportunity to establish a Finance team from scratch and make my mark in a company with exciting growth plans, which matched my aspirations. I’ve never previously worked for a PE-backed tech company, so the opportunity to learn about finance in this sector is really interesting.
What’s helped your career along the way?
Back at the start of my career I was supported by my then employer Northern Foods (now Arla) to qualify as an Accountant through home study whilst working full time. After qualifying, I was fortunate to work with CIMA to lead a programme at Northern Foods, helping others across the accountancy division gain their qualifications too, which was a really positive experience. I’ve also experienced, like many others, the family/work life juggle when my children where young. It was really tough and without the support of family and my employer at the time I don’t think I would have been able to do it all. I haven’t achieved this on my own and I am grateful for, and recognise the value of, the support I’ve been fortunate to receive. I think it is important to recognise and support others in their development.
What would you say to someone starting out in their career?
I am an advocate for having the right attitude. I always try and help and even if I don’t know something, I get stuck in. I think you reap what you sow and whilst the career I’ve chosen is demanding, I think that if you are willing to put in the work then you will achieve your goals. I also think that where you work matters – the people and the culture. Throughout my career I’ve worked with some fantastic people and supportive teams and Peppermint is very much included in that. At Peppermint there are so many people who are committed to the company and everyone wants to do a good job. People really care at Peppermint and that is amazing.