Women leaders making a difference: Fiona Scott of the EY Foundation

Posted on: June 26, 2015

Fiona Scott of EY Foundation has her dream job. She gets great satisfaction from helping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get started in their careers. Even better, she’s found a way to combine the best of the business and charity worlds to deliver this work, through a new UK charity founded by global professional services firm, EY. I interviewed her to find out how she did it.

Tell me about your journey to this point?

I started my career with a well-known global consultancy working on digital engineering. It was seen as a plum job which lots of graduates aspired to and recruitment was very competitive. However, it didn’t take me long to realise that although it was giving me a good business grounding, I didn’t find it fulfilling.  We would work very hard to produce a report but I couldn’t see any impact on people’s lives – which I realised is what I wanted.

I decided to take a risk – and a big pay cut – to move to the charity sector as a fundraiser for Mencap. Although I earned less I loved being able to see the tangible difference I was making to people’s lives. This was progress, yet I did miss the resources and professionalism of the corporate sector so after a few years I moved to EY to work on corporate responsibility, where I could combine doing good with the backing of a large organisation.

Last year I got the opportunity to work for the EY Foundation www.eyfoundation.co.uk, a new UK charity founded by EY in July 2014 to help young people to continue in education, get a job, or set up a social enterprise.  There are lots of charities supporting young people, but our USP is that we can put young people in touch with UK employers who can offer them opportunities, acting as brokers. We also run our own programmes and, like most charities, raise funds to support our work.

The corporate world can make a big difference – it’s fast paced, professional and gets stuff done. It was a bold move by EY to go further and to create an independent charity with its own board of trustees. It’s fantastic to be able to apply these qualities in the service of building a better society for our young people, for social entrepreneurs and for UK employers.

What advice would you give to other women who are considering a career shift to something more fulfilling?

We can allow ourselves to be held back by other peoples’ ideas of what constitutes a “good job”, or our own fears that it is not possible to combine earning a decent living with doing something fulfilling and worthwhile.  I took a risk and a big pay cut to change sectors in search of greater fulfilment, with no guarantee it would work. It paid off for me and I now guide young people to develop satisfying careers, having struggled to find my own way early on and felt alienated.

I’ve also been able to combine the best of the corporate and charity worlds in one organisation, showing that you don’t have to trade off resources and social value – the future is about combining these rather than seeing them as either/or.

“If you have a burning desire to do something then go for it! Be true to yourself. We regret the things we haven’t done rather than those we have.”