Lisa Lyons, a career in sales and consultancy

Currently I lead the Leadership & Workforce Transformation Practice at Mercer in the UK. We work with global clients to help them solve their most difficult people challenges. This can be projects to develop future leadership for a new business strategy, introduce a new performance management approach or ways to transform the HR function.

In my role, I am responsible for developing new business and managing senior client relationships. Here, it is important to build really strong relationships with clients.  The other part of my role is leading a team of people in the practice.  I take time to ensure that all our goals are aligned, that people feel engaged in their work and improve how we do work over time. 

Although, it has been quite a journey to get to this point. I started out working in sales. I was an Area Sales Representative for a company called Delice de France, and sold bread, croissants and cakes to our customers in the Manchester area in the UK. Following this, I joined Capgemini Consulting as a graduate consultant. I got the opportunity to join many different types of projects from customer experiencing planning, strategy events and developing running employee communications.  In this experience, what stood out for me was about how to work in a collaborative way. We always used interviews, focus groups, workshops and lots of communications to involve our clients in the work.  Following this time, I moved to Australia. I joined the Deloitte Human Capital Practice. I clearly remember the energy and vibrancy in the people and the market. Having left the Global Financial Crisis in London, Australia was less affected and was going through a resources boom. I learnt so much from my colleagues and worked on interesting projects in Sydney and Brisbane. After some time, my boss moved over to Mercer and after about a year, I removed across. This was my opportunity to specialise in the area of leadership and talent management in human resources. I had some fantastic inspirational women mentors in this role, that I still work and speak with today. They believed in me and championed my progress in my career.  After thinking very carefully about the next stage in my career, I wanted to take time to re-skill and stretch myself. I joined the International MBA at IE Business School in Madrid. I joined students from across the world and embarked on the MBA journey. It was a seriously tough year! Long hours, testing times during team projects and so many presentations! It was at this point that I joined that Women in Business Club Board. It was a time when I was seeing more of the biases in the workplace, and wanted to get more involved. After the MBA, I feel that I emerged with more confidence in myself, which was one of the major breakthroughs. After returning to the UK, I rejoined Mercer as a Senior Associate in the London Office. I got great opportunities to run new projects on a global scale and develop the business. Since then, I have been promoted a number of times, to where I am today.

MEET & GREET WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE IE´S INTERNATIONAL WOMEN´S BOARD.
V CYCLE OF CONVERSATIONS.
WITH LISA LYONS.

26 JUNE
11:00 CET
VENUE: https://ieuniversity.zoom.us/j/97416440278

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