As a young single mum living in a tiny Cheetham Hill flat, Bridget Lea only ever wanted what was best for her two daughters.
So when she landed a graduate training scheme at M&S, she knew she was on the path to success – telling her children when she got the acceptance letter: “We’re going out for dinner tonight, mummy's rich.”
Yet the programme was just the start of Bridget’s career. The mum, from Prestwich, would climb the ranks and eventually become the managing director of commercial for BT, EE and Plusnet.
Bridget’s journey started when she became a young parent. Giving birth to her daughters when she was just 17 and 21, she wondered how she could give them an “amazing future”.
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That’s when she applied to work at the Co-op head office in Manchester city centre as a filing clerk. For the first time, Bridget was earning her own money and loved the responsibilities that came with the role.
Seeing how well she was doing, Bridget was given the additional task of helping new graduate trainees settle into the business.
After spending time with the graduates, Bridget noticed they were of a similar age and had the same abilities but were paid more.
Wanting to create those opportunities for herself, Bridget applied to Manchester Metropolitan University to study IT. “I was there on a mission,” she added. “I wasn’t going out every night; I was there to get the degree”.
Bridget, who now lives in Whitefield, graduated with a 2.1 and applied for a graduate training scheme at M&S. Once accepted, she began receiving a yearly salary of £15k - money Bridget saw as “enormous” at the time.
“I was lucky to get that role, it was one of the best days of my life when I got the letter,” she said. “I went home to my daughters that night and said, ‘We’re going out tonight for dinner, you can have anything you want off the menu because mummy’s rich’.
“It was one of the best evenings I’ve ever had. I started at M&S and it was brilliant. I was on what I saw as an enormous salary, £15,000 a year, and I could see a career path for myself.”
After a while, Bridget began to struggle travelling for work while caring for two young children. Having worked for M&S for around five years, she made the decision to progress her career and move on elsewhere.
That’s when she started working at Topshop and had a female boss for the first time in her career – Jane Shepherdson – a woman who would become a huge influence on her going forward.
“Working at Topshop was an interesting moment for my career,” Bridget said. “I worked for the first female boss I had and she took it from being a non-leading brand to a leading brand on the high street.
“I learnt from her and she had a strong female vision and a diverse team. I decided that after that, all my teams were going to be as diverse as I could possibly make them."
Bridget then went on to work at O2 from 2013 until 2019, after which she worked at Sainsbury’s as managing director for the North. She began working at BT/EE as managing director of commercial in 2021.
The mum can recall being initially hesitant about the role at O2 due to only being familiar with the fashion corporate world and not technical.
But she decided to take a leap of faith – and hasn’t looked back since. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s not for me, I know my lane and it’s fashion,’” she said.
“But I had a chat with some men and I told them what I thought the business needed. I told them some of the stuff I liked and disliked about my sector and they liked what I was saying. I decided to move into that sector.”
Despite her success, Bridget has faced many challenges throughout her career – believing she had to work “twice as hard” being a woman.
“There are a number of struggles,” she said. “How on Earth do you balance being a mum looking after children? It’s not just those things mums have to think about. It’s the house and bills.
“How do you juggle everything and feel credible in your work and feel like you’re a good mum? I think that was something that was challenging and when I had young children you did not talk about your kids at work – certainly not if there was a problem or someone was sick.
“We weren’t able to go to nativity days or sports days. That was not the done thing. To ask for that was like saying, ‘I don’t want to be promoted and I’m putting my children first’.
“That was a negative thing back then, and that’s something I’m very conscious of now. I actively encourage these things on my team and I want them to go to important moments because those are the things they will remember.
“Women and I felt like they had to work twice as hard to prove themselves. (It felt like) 'Just because I am a single mum, please take me seriously alongside my male counterparts who don’t have the perceived baggage you probably think I have.'
“I worked harder, I worked longer hours and I did a lot of extra stuff just to make sure I had that seat at the table.”
Bridget believes work still needs to be done to create gender equality in the workplace.
“Men have a massive role to play here,” she said. “Women still don’t hold all the positions of power. We still need male colleagues to look out for women.
“They need to be included in meetings and events taking place after work. We have to get our men to be more educated and feel confident and have those conversations so women don’t have to hide.”
Bridget advises anyone looking to climb the ranks at work to be their authentic selves and not feel as though they need to “fit into a box”.
“Whether we like it or not, working hard and getting yourself through the door is the first thing,” she said. “But don’t feel the need to conform.
“When I was starting out I felt like I had to fit into a mould to fit into the status quo around me.
“One thing I notice now Is people are authentically themselves. Don’t hide the elements of you that are different to others – bring them to work because it’ll help others. Don’t feel like you have to fit into a box.
“I didn’t have an absolute masterplan of where I wanted to get to and I still don’t. But having a loose plan of what you want your life to look like in five or 10 years is important because you don’t want to waste five years going down the wrong route.
“It’s not about having a step-by-step plan, but roughly knowing what sort of place you want to live, how many kids you want, whether you want to work hard or not at all helps you make the decisions you’re making at the moment take you in that direction.
“Be kind to yourself. We’re living in a world that is incredibly fast paced and we’re switched on all the time. I encourage people to give themselves a bit of a break and be kind to themselves to get the best balance they can.”
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