Celebrating Katie Ford | IWD

For International Women's Day 2022, we decided to celebrate successful women in our business, get to know them and promote their achievements both inside and outside of the workplace.

What are you currently watching on Netflix?

The Chestnut Man and Love is Blind.

What does your job involve at Midwich?

Basically, as Head of Channel Marketing, I focus on building our marketing department into a strong and successful team that deliver the best possible marketing for our brands.

How did you find yourself in the marketing world?

I began my career in the NHS as a psychiatric nurse and then moved to work in mental health care in New Zealand. When I came back to the UK in the middle of the recession, it forced a career change. I was a temporary proofreader for a content creation company and an opportunity to be an account manager came up, I gave it a shot and I thought ‘marketing is interesting’ – it’s all psychological! It was quite difficult, at the age of 29, to start a brand-new career in marketing as it’s pretty competitive. But if you want something badly enough and you try hard enough, anything is achievable.

How did you progress into your current role at Midwich?

I joined Midwich 5 years ago as a product marketing manager for the document solutions division. Shortly after I started, I was given an opportunity and asked if I’d like to consider re-structuring the team to make it more efficient and that’s what I did. In the last few years, it’s gone through quite a lot of changes, but I think we’ve currently got the best team we’ve ever had.

How have you developed the marketing team?

I’ve structured it like a creative agency, and it works. Previously, members of the team didn’t have the opportunity to get stuck into different brands and different projects. Before, if you worked in document solutions that’s all you did – you didn’t have the chance to work with AV brands or do anything different. Now you get a mix of everything and this really helps with development and understanding of the many different technology types, hopefully making us more efficient and knowledgeable!

What’s your favourite thing about working at Midwich?

The people are amazing! And the opportunity it gives you. I think it’s unusual that you can join a company the size of Midwich and still have your ideas listened to and validated. We praise success and I think that recognition is very important to your growth and personal pride.

Who is your role model?

Probably my dad. I’ve always been encouraged to never take no as the first answer and to keep striving for what I want. But to go about that the right way and treat people with respect. That had a positive effect on me.

What is an important leadership skill?

Listening to your team no matter what and wanting the absolute best for everybody that you work with. Your own needs take a back seat to ensure your team is progressing, growing and being the best that they can be. I realised very early on that if I didn’t do that, achieving growth just wasn’t possible.

What is something you would like to achieve this year?

I would like to start my MBA in September. I want to use it to grow myself personally and professionally. I look at Steve Fay who has completed his, see how he’s grown as a person and what he’s looking to achieve with marketing and the wider business and would to like to achieve this too.

The AV industry is male orientated, do you think this is something we can tackle?

I think it’s quite difficult to tackle. I’d say it is more of a societal problem rather than an isolated industry problem. There may actually be a recruiting issue within the industry, and we may not be attractive to women or other low represented groups. That said, if we can understand the reasons why women don’t choose the AV industry then we could target recruitment in a more efficient way. I’d like to see more equality of opportunity everywhere and this is something I feel Midwich is really balanced and fair with as a whole.

International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality. 

International Women's Day has occurred for well over a century with the first gathering held in 1911. The campaign theme for International Women's Day 2022 is #BreakTheBias. Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn't enough. Action is needed to level the playing field.