A Good Time to be a Girl : Don’t Lean in, Change the System

Helena Morrissey is one of the best-known women in the City. She started her career in New York with Schroder Capital Management. After returning to London she joined Newton in 1994 as a junior fund manager and was appointed CEO in 2001. During her fifteen years leading the firm, assets under management grew from GBP20 billion to over GBP50 billion. Helena is now Chair of the Investment Association, the UK’s industry trade body whose members manage more than GBP5 trillion and Head of Personal Investing at Legal and General Management, a new role aimed at engaging the nation to save and invest more.

In 2010, Helena founded the 30% Club, a cross-business initiative to achieve better gender-balanced UK company boards. The 30% Club now leads efforts which span the whole career journey from schoolroom to boardroom and the proportion of female directors on UK listed company boards has more than doubled. The 30% Club approach has been adopted internationally, including in the US, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the Gulf Co-Operation Countries. Helena also chairs Business in the Community’s gender equality campaign, part of the Prince of Wales’ Responsible Business network.
Helena has been named one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. She has twice been voted one of the 50 Most Influential People in Finance globally by Bloomberg Markets. Helena is a regular media commentator on topics as wide-ranging as climate change, executive pay and Brexit. Her well-received guest edit of the ‘Today’ programme in December 2016 developed the theme of ‘power to the people’ and featured contributions from Michael Gove, John Macfarlane and Michael Lewis. Helena is a Fellow of London Business School and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Cambridge University in 2016. She was appointed CBE in the 2012 New Year’s Honours list for her contribution to the role of women in business. In 2017, she was made a dame.

A Cambridge philosophy graduate, Helena is married to a Buddhist meditation teacher and they have nine children, six girls and three boys whose ages range from 8 to 26.