THE BIG INTERVIEW
MD is breaking the mould and singing to her own tune
Music licensing company PPL PRS has become one of the fastest- growing employers in Leicester since arriving in the city four years ago. At the helm is Andrea Gray, who talks to Dan Robinson about her journey from leaving school at 17 to managing director, changing attitudes to giving women senior roles in business and trying to build the best place to work in the city.
degrees and many have either the letters MBA or PhD at the end of their names. Andrea Gray might not be in this cohort – although
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there’s every chance she might be one day, given the vast leadership experience she has built over the past three decades – but it’s striking that she doesn’t fit the typical profile of a British CEO or MD. For a start, she left school aged 17 and has no major qualifications. And while the opportunity to go back into study could be tempting, it clearly hasn’t held her back, having been appointed as managing director of PPL PRS – the Leicester-based organisation that issues TheMusicLicence, which enables businesses to legally play music for employees and customers – 16 months ago to oversee its continued rapid growth. “I wouldn’t necessarily advocate leaving school to
get a job rather than the education route,” she says. “Some people do really well in the education environment and others don’t. Some learn better on the job. “It’s horses for courses. I have some friends who are
career students and that’s great, but for me that was never going to work. At various times in my career, I’ve considered whether to go back and study, but I don’t think qualifications would particularly add much to who I am.”
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT time – and occasionally the opposite – is Andrea’s explanation for her journey to managing director of PPL PRS. “There was no plan,” she explains. “I left school as
soon as I could, much to my father’s dissatisfaction, but my parents insisted on me getting a job.” Her first position was as an accounts clerk but she
did a number of jobs in the formative years of her career, including as a bookkeeper, driving instructor and pharmacy dispenser, without being fully engaged with any. In her early 20s, Andrea decided on a different route
and took up a temporary job at American Express in 1992, based in her hometown of Brighton. “I was due to be there for just a few months in credit
control but ended up there for eight years,” she says. Starting off on the phones, she climbed the ranks, first
to team leader and eventually as head of service performance, managing caller traffic into contact centres.
26 business networkMarch 2021
he average CEO of a FTSE 100 company is aged 55, male, white and university- educated – most likely at Oxford or Cambridge – according to the recruiter Robert Half. Often they have multiple
She’d found her passion in leading large operations
and being surrounded by people, while enjoying the busy and dynamic contact centre environments. Looking back, Andrea recognises she became a
leader from a young age – having managed her first team in her early 20s and then headed up multiple teams by her early 30s. “It’s probably more difficult now to take the route I
did without the qualifications, but not impossible,” she says. “Fewer people went to university when I was young,
that’s for sure, because we all wanted to earn money to go to the pub!” Afraid of becoming “institutionalised”, Andrea
relocated to Swansea to head up telecoms firm NTL’s fault centre, before further moves around the country over the next 15 years to work in cross-sector leadership roles, including at BNP Paribas subsidiary FTS Ltd and Nuffield Health. In 2014, she took a phone call about her “dream role”
to work as operations director for insurance company Hastings Direct, setting up its third UK contact centre in Leicester. “In my industry, when you’re leading large
operational centres, most roles are about going in and improving things – making it more efficient and changing the culture,” she says. “But while I was at Nuffield Health, I was asked about
joining a new start-up operation where I’d go in and develop the office space, recruit people and grow it.
The United for Music wall mural in the PPL PRS office
Andrea Gray joined PPL PRS as managing director in November 2019
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