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27 March 25 Press releases

Luxury: When is a car company not a car company?  

  • Episode five of Women in the driving seat, a new podcast from Auto Trader, features Fiona Howarth, CEO of Octopus Electric Vehicles and Vicky Read CEO of ChargeUK.
  • The conversation covers how to balance family life with a CEO schedule, the evolution of the EV sector and why the team around you can make all the difference.
  • This episode will be available to listen to on all podcast platforms from Thursday 20th

 

27th March, London:  Episode six of the new Auto Trader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, divorced mum of two and award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen. 

Episode six covers managing demanding roles with family commitments, achieving career goals and how the luxury focus on brand experience could be mirrored elsewhere. 

All episodes in the series feature a Podcast Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; Lark or owl? Circuit or circuits? Phone by the bed or phone downstairs? 

Join Erin as she puts two luxury automotive leaders in the driving seat.  

 


 

Podcast preview

Angie Ayscough:

“Anyone who comes into your studio, you treat them like a guest in your home” 

“I didn’t get an interview with any car brand so I thought I’d write a letter” 

“I felt I had transferrable skills but I didn’t get anywhere” 

“Genesis was marrying my luxury background with my passion for automotive” 

“When I’m recruiting, I don’t look for someone with an automotive background. I look for someone in hospitality or luxury retail” 

"My husband does the cooking; I hate it” 

“It’s taken time for women to apply for the roles at Genesis” 

Emma Begley:

[on recruiting talent] “Luxury is interesting to me, that they understand the world that we’re in. We don’t’ see ourselves as a car company… it’s important they understand that.” 

“You have to put the product into that world to make it make sense” 

[On balancing a global role with family] “With a lot of help, you need a lot of support… you need to be able to trust these people, your kids need to be able to get on with them really well.” 

“We’re open minded so be open minded about Rolls Royce.” 

“Any client can make it their own masterpiece.” 

“There’s lots of movement within Rolls-Royce so you’re not pigeon-holed” 

“We’ve got 50 nationalities represented at Rolls-Royce” 

“It’s friendly and nice, our average age is under 40, it’s a young company” 

“We are a house of luxury and it happens to be that our product is a rather magnificent motor car” 

 


 

Auto Trader’s new podcast Women in the driving seat releases new episodes every Thursday.


 

Notes to editors

ABOUT ERIN BAKER 

Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a divorced mother of two boys.

 

ABOUT AUTO TRADER 

Auto Trader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.

Auto Trader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Auto Trader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.

With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Auto Trader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Auto Trader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.

Auto Trader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.

For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk

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