Big Brands: Big Bosses and Big Vehicles
London, 18th September London: Episode 18 of the Autotrader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
This episode explores how the gender gap in the automotive industry has changed over time, and we look at the contributions women have made at all levels from engineering to head office and the show rooms.
All episodes in the series feature a Podcast Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; Jaguar or Land Rover? Retailer or OEM? Van or lorry?
Join Erin as she puts two automotive heavy hitters in the driving seat.
Podcast Preview
Lisa Jay
“There’s no boys club of you’ve got to be able to do xyz, but you’ve got to be able to understand how our car performs. We’ve also got to be able to understand how customers experience our car.”
“There is a common misconception that it is a ‘boys club’ especially at the luxury or more high-end side of things. It’s completely not like that now.”
“My own senior leadership team is 40% female, I look around my peer group of manufacturing directors and engineering directors, and they’re also female.”
“I used to be the lone woman on a test trip or I’ll be the lone woman in a meeting, but now I’m very rarely the only woman in the room. I absolutely love it, we get better products and we get better collaboration and it’s just a better place to be.”
“Overall across the patch it is a really positive time to be a woman and to advance your career, I’m really passionate that I’m seeing a lot more women in leadership roles at JLR, which shows the pipeline work done 10 years ago is now starting to work.”
“I’ve had a lot of my big promotions since having children. I came back more ambitious after having my children than I was before.”
Amy-Louise Carter
“I’ve been in the [automotive] trade for just over 15 years now and I’ve started to see the shift already.”
“Trucks have those connotations of being industrial and perhaps being dirty and not so glamorous as the car side of things. But actually it’s far from that, we’re in a place where the truck world is really exciting.”
“There’s so much technology and innovation going on that actually there's absolutely space to anybody with the right mindset in trucks.”
“Sometimes we’re collaborating with our colleagues in Germany or across the globe about what the future looks like and having that influence in what the product line up is going to look like for the UK in the future.”
“No two days are the same and it’s [the job] is really interesting because of that.”
“We have a really diverse range of trucks and lorries for a variety of purposes”
“Women are among drivers, among fleet managers, among owners of operators, but yes there is still an underrepresentation of women. But it is changing, and within our business as an OEM, actually it doesn’t feel like that at all.”
“We have lots of women coming in and coming up into the business. I think it’s important, and someone who has the opportunity in one of those roles to be visible and show up and talk about what a great place it is to work.”
Notes to editors
ABOUT ERIN BAKER
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a single mother of two boys.
ABOUT LISA JAY
Lisa Jay started her career at 16 as a technical apprentice in the construction industry and fell in love with the automotive industry by chance when she took on a temporary role at Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant in 1999. Since then, she has worked in a variety of roles across Manufacturing, Engineering, and Product Development, and before joining JLR, was at Aston Martin. At JLR, she has worked on the Jaguar F-TYPE, Jaguar I-PACE, and Range Rover Evoque, to name a few. She has been in her current role as Range Rover Programme Chief for 3 and a half years – leading future development projects on both Range Rover and Range Rover Sport. Lisa is the executive sponsor of the Gender Equality Network at JLR, an employee-led network that is passionate about driving inclusion and supporting initiatives to drive gender equality.
Lisa is 49 years old, 26 years married, with two sons aged 18 and 20, and 2 dogs! She lives in the beautiful Warwickshire countryside and outside of work enjoys running, lifting heavy weights and a bit of cold-water swimming.
ABOUT AMY-LOUISE CARTER
Amy-Louise Carter is Head of Product at Daimler Truck UK, where she's been since 2022. Before that, she spent years in the franchised dealer network, running commercial vehicle workshops and getting hands-on with the realities of the industry. She lives in sunny Suffolk with her husband, their three-year-old daughter, and two cats. A keen gardener and firm believer in the power of a good break, she sums up her life as "always having the next holiday booked to help on those days where I feel like I’m losing my mind!
ABOUT AUTOTRADER
Autotrader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Autotrader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Autotrader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Autotrader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Autotrader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Autotrader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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