18 Grad interview
There’s no doubt that the world of business
is tough, competitive and unforgiving of
damaging mistakes. Accordingly, you’d
think that to carve out a top career and
reach the highest echelons in a large
company you’d need to be ruthlessly
ambitious and excel in machiavellian-style
scheming and office politics.
But you’d be wrong. To succeed certainly
takes a bucketful of determination, hard
work and talent, but also a passion for the
job, a genuine concern for employees and
a positive and engaging personality, as
Catherine Barton proves.
Catherine, who is just 34 years old, is one
of the youngest of about 670 partners at
Deloitte, the business advisory firm, which
has more than 11,000 people working
for it. An insurance and actuarial expert,
she became a partner at 31– remaining
Deloitte’s youngest partner for two years
– having been promoted to Director aged
just 29.
Last year, Catherine was named in the
prestigious Management Today ‘Top 35
Women under 35’ list, which highlights
achievements of female talent.
As a partner in Deloitte’s insurance
practice, Catherine provides actuarial
advice to a number of international
insurers. She also leads a team of
actuaries and is very involved in developing
more junior members of Deloitte’s
insurance team and has a particular
interest in encouraging more women into
Climbing
the profession.
Actuaries are the professionals who work
out statistics and risks for insurance
the ladder
purposes – you’d expect Catherine to
be a slave to number crunching and
spreadsheets, with a head for figures
rather than the cut and thrust of business.
Catherine Barton is one of the key
Catherine’s position now couldn’t be
further from this! She wins valuable
players in the insurance industry, thanks
contracts for Deloitte, manages her team
and helps determine overall strategy.
to a career that has seen her rise to the
She says: “I was a very technical
top in a short space of time. Here she
mathematician and heavily into maths and
science, so it made sense to become an
tells Paul Johnson some of the secrets
actuary, where maths was such a big part.
Now I do much less of the maths bit,
of her success although for years that was all I did. I love
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