COSTA BOSS IS LEADING WOMAN IN UK BUSINESS
SHE once revealed how men would talk over her in meetings, but now Whitbread boss Alison Brittain has won the nation’s most prestigious prize for businesswomen.
The 52-year-old chief executive has scooped the 44th Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Award, recognising her position as a role model for women striving to reach the top of large organisations.
She is one of only six female chief executives in the FTSE 100 and has run the leisure group which owns Costa Coffee and Premier Inn since 2015 after a career in banking.
In taking the award, Brittain joins Body Shop founder Anita Roddick and Marjorie Scardino, the first female chief executive of a FTSE 100 business when she ran Pearson.
She said last night: ‘I’m delighted to be following in the footsteps of so many outstanding women.’
Despite being a prestigious gong, the Veuve Clicquot can also be a curse, with many former winners flopping soon after they received it.
Harriet Green won in 2014 and was ousted from Thomas Cook six months later. Carolyn McCall, who won it in 2008 while chief executive of Guardian Media, had to resign her post on the board of Tesco a short while afterwards over a libel case between the two companies. Brittain, who was born in Derbyshire to a doctor mother, is married and has two children. She had initially set her sights on a marketing career but went on to join Barclays, working at the bank for 19 years.
Even after her success, Brittain has admitted men ‘try to talk over me’.
She added: ‘I did a decade in commercial banking [at Barclays]. There were no women. If you were a woman you stood out.
‘You do have to find a way of being noticed and being heard.’