Seeing is believing:Women in charge
London, 9th October: Episode 22 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 examines the impact of seeing women in leadership positions, with guests sharing their experiences of seeing women in key roles and how this helped them to think differently about leadership. The guests also discuss the importance of embracing change in leadership - for both delivering results and personal development. The episode touches on the importance of gathering a range of experiences, in different roles and disciplines, and how this is vital to a successful career.
All episodes in the series feature a Podcast Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; France or England? Chairman or CEO? Wfh or work in the office?
Join Erin as she puts two independent leaders in the driving seat.
Podcast Preview
Lakshmi Moorthy
“When they asked me to become Chair, I thought ‘how am I going to do this?’ because the board was full of men who’d been in the UK and leasing sector for years, and I was new to the UK and I was new to leasing and the only female.”
“However, I could see myself doing it [becoming Chair] because I could see how she [Nina] did it, and with her style I thought ‘I could do that’.”
“Automotive leasing is full of a lot of men, and they’ve all been in the industry forever, and they’ve all known each other for the last 20, 30 years. Lots of people have similar personalities, and Nina had a very different personality. I could see myself more in that role, in that style, than perhaps the style of the other men around the table.”
“As a leasing company, I’m also in financial services, I’m owned by a bank. I probably spend as much time thinking about large fleets, dealing with consumer regulation because a third of my fleet goes to individuals like you and me.”
“In my career what I’ve found of great value is that I can make links and connect dots. I used to work in credit guards years ago, and some of the regulation that came in there, is now coming to auto finance 15 years later.”
“That awareness of different industries, different cultures and different environment helps because the world is changing so much.”
“If I think about my job four years ago when I started to today, it’s completely different.”
“Our careers are going to evolve and change more rapidly in the future, lots of these worlds are intertwining.”
“I wish I’d embraced change even more, because every change you go through A) you learn something, B) it does away with imposter syndrome because next time you think ‘I didn’t know anything about this and I did it successfully’ but what change does is build a portfolio of information and transferrable skills so that when you’re in the next new thing, it works.”
“That’s why I love my job at the BVRLA because I meet people. Not only competitors but also I meet people from slightly different dimensions, policy makers and that’s where you keep learning and you can use it in different parts of your role.”
Erin Baker
“It’s so hard to qualify the effect that any woman to come into any industry, in any sector, in any role has because there’s no hard data behind it other than the number of women who might come through afterwards.”
“It has an emotional effect, the imposter syndrome starts to go out of the window a little bit – other women coming through might choose to do it completely differently. It’s not them about modelling themselves on that person, it’s about [understanding] ‘okay it’s available to me now.’”
Hayley Pells
“The professional register is really useful. It can showcase your career in a non-partisan way, whereas a CV can be flowery or embellished, a professional register is a benchmark. It’s a standard, a quality and it has rigor. It not just something a motorist can have faith in, but also employers.
“Anybody at all can access our professional register, and see if that vehicle technician is actually qualified to work on your vehicle. As we’re moving into a space where cars are more
“If you were a vehicle technician that has been working on a modern diesel engine and the way modern injection systems work, it is so chaotic trying to get your brain wrapped around those complex systems that are all interplaying with each other. You can work on an electric vehicle.”
“We’ve got record numbers of technicians coming in and embracing electrification. But there is still work to do. We do keep a very active watch on this because it’s such an important dial.”
“We publish those results regularly on our website, so anyone can come and have a look, see where those EV trained technicians are.”
“Early doors I embraced EV technology, and I didn’t actually have enough cars to work on, so in order to continue my own CPD [Continuing Professional Development] I had to lecture in the adult education space because I didn’t have enough cars to fix.
“Although I was seeing them [EVs] regularly, I wasn’t seeing them with faults.”
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.
LAKSHMI MOORTHY
Lakshmi is the UK CEO for Arval, which is one of the largest vehicle leasing businesses in the UK. The company (part of BNP Paribas bank) manages a fleet of over 198K vehicles and has 750+ employees. She has been in her current role for 4 years, and is the only female CEO among the top 10 vehicles leasing companies in the UK.
Prior to taking over the UK CEO role in 2021, she worked with the Group headquarters in Paris in a global role - which involved commuting across countries for 2 years and relocating her family to Paris for 3 years, despite none of them speaking any French!
Lakshmi is also currently the Chair of the BVRLA, the trade association for leasing and rental companies in the UK.
Lakshmi has lived and worked in several countries including UK, France and India. She is married with a very supportive husband, two teenage children and (the one she loves most) a gorgeous dog! She splits her time between Swindon (where she works) and London (where her family lives).
HAYLEY PELLS
Hayley Pells is the Government Affairs Lead at the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI), where she informs skills strategy and workforce readiness across the UK automotive sector. With a technical background in automotive repair and experience as a business owner, Hayley brings both practical insight and policy expertise to her role.
She is a published author of four books on emerging automotive technologies, with her latest work on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) due for publication soon. A respected voice in the sector, Hayley serves on an Executive Committee of the Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT) and is a member of several cross-sector advisory groups focused on skills reform and vocational education.
Her contributions to the industry have been recognised with multiple awards, and she is frequently called upon to advise government departments and Select Committees on skills policy, apprenticeship reform, and green technology readiness.
Hayley is a fan of vintage vehicles, she has a 1954 Ford pick-up and a 1971 Italian air-mach-e. Enough to start a small fire under your bottom.
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