CM October 2023

INTERVIEW
FOLLOW
MY LEADER
Sean Feast FCICM speaks to
Vikki Brownridge of StepChange about
leadership, charity funding, and making
the most out of life’s opportunities.
IT was early in her career that Vikki
Brownridge discovered she had
a flair for leadership. She was 19
and running a newly established
contact centre for Avery Berkel,
the famous manufacturer of
weighing equipment: “I found I really
enjoyed leading people,” she explains, “and
leading the development of new products
and services. I loved the hustle and bustle
of the contact centre environment but also
knew that my future career had to be in
leadership.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise, therefore, that
Vikki is now the Chief Executive of the UK’s
leading debt charity, StepChange, but what
is perhaps more of a surprise is her journey
in getting there.
Born in Leeds, coincidentally where
StepChange had its first office, Vikki is
from a typical working-class background.
Her father was a bus driver, and her mother
had a series of part-time jobs to make ends
meet. Educated at the local State school,
a passion for racket sports led to a Sports
Scholarship at an Independent School,
Woodhouse Grove: “I played squash for the
County and for the North West of England
and this led to a scholarship that gave me
an opportunity I would not have otherwise
had,” she explains.
Telephone banking
Enjoying English and History, she did well at
GCSEs until family circumstances obliged
her to leave school before her A levels and
find a job. She joined First Direct, one of
the early trailblazers in telephone banking,
as a Banking Representative and after two
years moved on to Club 24 as a Customer
Service Advisor, exposing her to the world
of credit: “I worked on the phones and then
took on a supervisory role,” she says. “It was
my first career stepping-stone, learning
how to lead and be a mentor to others. I
really enjoyed it.”
An opportunity to join Avery Berkel
tempted her away, and in 1996 she joined
the firm to lead its newly established
contact centre in Leeds from which it
would manage and despatch engineers to
service Avery equipment across the UK: “I
took everything I had observed and learned
in larger contact centres and applied them
at Avery,” she says.
Her talent and abilities were quickly
recognised, and she soon after found
herself working on a major transformation
programme with KPMG, migrating
10 disparate systems into one: “It was
the time of the Millennium bug,” she
recalls, “and our systems were not
Millennium compliant. I led the project
team representing the contact centre
environment, and the programme helped
widen my experience and broaden my
skillsets into project management.”
With the programme successfully
completed, after a brief spell with BT
Cellnet, Vikki was enticed back to Club 24,
which had since become Ventura, to lead
its Telemarketing and Collections division
as an Operations Manager. She spent five
enjoyable years at the business, during
Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com / October 2023 / PAGE 12