Varied experience leads to plum roles

by Catherine Woods - Monday, 12th May 2008 -

After two years as Kidsunlimited’s finance director, Lee Pearson made the jump to the chief executive position. For other young accountants seeking a similar progression, Pearson is clear that a varied a background is crucial.

“Go out and get as much breadth of experience as possible. I would like to think I’ve got a far better understanding of what companies need because of my experience,” he says.

Pearson is spearheading a drive to aggressively grow the childcare business. It’s currently a £30m-turnover operation with 50 sites looking after approximately 5,500 children each day.

For most of his early career, Pearson worked for General Electric in the US, Africa and Russia but has also worked for companies such as Xansa. “I spent my entire career with sites where there were a large number of very small transactions that make the business tick,” he adds. “I worked for one company that grew very rapidly, which meant I was in a position to get exposure to quite a lot of things such as salary, marketing and contract management.”

Pearson makes the interesting point that he believes finance roles haven’t kept pace with finance titles. “Job titles have evolved over the years – you went from finance manager to management accountant to something with control in the title, to more business partnering.

“I’m not sure that the roles have followed suit with the titles. I think there’s a fantastic opportunity for the business to embrace what finance people can do.”

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