Kate Ashworth
Legal and compliance manager
Stepping into the Brother UK HQ for the first time over five years ago, it was hard for Kate to imagine just where her journey with us would take her.Back then, Kate had just completed her second year as a law student at The University of Manchester and was looking to boost her CV with some valuable work experience before embarking on her final year of studies.
Fast forward five years and those first steps have put Kate on a successful career path that has seen her accelerate quickly from law student to legal and compliance manager.
Kate’s growth at Brother has been set against a backdrop of deep relationship building, sharing of experience and hard work. Here she shares her story so far:
“I continued to stay in contact with Brother regularly following my first summer placement, and I’d just finished my law degree when I was asked to join the company. At that time the head of legal was coming up for retirement, so it was not just an amazing opportunity, but an enormous one.
“While I joined initially as a corporate planning assistant primarily to introduce systems and processes to manage our ISO accreditations, we also work edquickly to put a succession plan in place.
“My development was a hugely collaborative process. I attended external training courses to help me apply the knowledge from my degree in the business world, but ultimately it was the close relationships I built within the business that proved invaluable.
“I was mentored closely by the head of legal, who was able to share her vast experience and knowledge of Brother and bit by bit, I took on more and more of her responsibilities. The support I received and working together towards a clear plan meant the handover was never overwhelming.
“Since then I’ve rapidly developed my role and am now responsible for all commercial, legal and contractual issues in the business, as well as ISO accreditations. I get to interact with every area of Brother, which means there’s lots of variety and lots of new opportunities to learn. Every day is afresh experience.
“Looking to the future I’d like to develop my responsibilities even further,leading my own team and working on more projects within the wider group. I’m confident that with the continued encouragement and support of senior management, I’ll be able to achieve this.”