Developing our people through inspiration

Matthew Jones

Head of end user sales

Over the past 12 years at Brother, Matthew has embraced all the experiences that have come his way with open arms and progressed in his career from promising salesperson to highly valued team leader, heading up our end user sales team.

This approach has given him the opportunity to gain experience of working with many of our reseller and end user customers, as well as colleagues from across Brother.

During Matt’s time at Brother his learning and development journey has been just as fast paced and diverse, encompassing studying German and Japanese for business right through to leadership training. Currently we are supporting Matt in obtaining an MSc in Organisational and Business Psychology.

With such a deep history behind him, it’s easy to see why Matthew is so passionate about his role and how his aims for the future can play a significant part shaping both his team and the wider culture at Brother.

Reflecting on his time with Brother so far and plans ahead, Matthew shared:“I joined Brother from a media-sales role, starting as a regional account manager, looking after a base of about 500 reseller customers across the north of England and Scotland.

“After five years, I was appointed as a senior corporate client manager,which was when my role became focused on working with end users and helping them solve their specific challenges.

“These experiences taught me that our ‘At your side’ ethos isn’t just a throw-away line, it’s something that has real traction with our customers.Anyone that has worked with the team, and experienced the passion we put into helping end users solve problems, always wants to have our support the next time.

“That’s why our people are our greatest asset as a business, and my career is testament to the investment that Brother makes in developing colleagues to be the best they can be.

“Right the way through, I’ve been invested in, believed in, trusted and given autonomy. I’ve been allowed to make my own mistakes and do things my own way, but my colleagues are always there to support me.

“Going forward, I’m excited about helping to shape the cultural architecture of the business, and ensuring we have the right people in the right places to take on the challenges of the future.”

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.”