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Vicki Winner, CPO at holiday letting agency Travel Chapter, is an unexpected senior HR professional. An autistic introvert, people skills don't come naturally to her. Yet, she’s worked hard to acquire them and has successfully led HR teams for several high-growth organisations in the UK and globally for 24 years.
‘Teaching was my first choice, but I realised early on it wasn’t for me’
After completing a degree in history at the University of Plymouth, Winner’s first thought was to go into teaching. She says: “I started my qualification but quickly realised that the classroom wasn’t for me. I didn’t end up completing it.”
Having made this decision, she proactively set out on a new career path and landed a job at a local accountancy practice as an office manager. It was here she realised that she enjoyed the people side of the business, despite not being a natural people person at all. “I thrive on solving problems, empowering others, and nurturing talent through continuous learning and development,” she says.
I’ve had to learn people skills that haven’t come naturally to me. It has made me a more empathetic leader
She gained a CIPD qualification and an MSc in Human Resources, then joined Babcock International Group in 2002 as HR Manager. Her next move was to the NHS as an HR business partner, a role she did for four years until 2015. “I worked across a number of different hospitals. It centred upon casework and employee relations,” she says. She leaned into the technical side of employment law and armed herself with the regulatory competences to tackle the unions, yet while she learned a lot at the NHS, she found the bureaucracy and pace frustrating.
‘Fast-paced scale-ups are where I thrive’
Winner has a particular affinity with start-ups and scale-ups. “I love the high growth phase,” she says. “I also like the freedom the private sector offers; following everything to the letter in terms of procedures in the public sector can be constraining.”
After the NHS, Winner went on to work for a range of technology businesses – the Synergy Group, Telmar, Cognassist, and Jurassic Fibre. “Cognassist particularly appealed to me,” she says. “It was an EdTech scale up developing a product to help support autistic pupils within the education sector. My daughter is autistic and so am I, so it resonated with me.”
Sharing her own story about neurodiversity wasn’t something Winner was comfortable doing, but over time she has become a champion of autism. I ask her if being autistic has made it harder to forge ahead in a profession that’s all about people skills.
