Past Featured Chairmen

Tina Rogers is one of the country's most successful IT businesswomen. Her CV is littered with a list of non-exec chairmanships as long as your arm. She has led buy outs, turned failing companies round, raised finance, sold companies, and made herself and many of her colleagues wealthy. So have many other IT leaders of today, but two things make Rogers, if not unique, then in a very, very exclusive club. Firstly she is a woman in a male-dominated market. So what you say? There are some female IT leaders. True, but how many of them come from an inner-city council estate and left school at 16? Exactly.

Rogers insists that her career and success are based on luck. But as the South African golfer Gary Player commented, 'The harder you work, the luckier you get.'

Having started as a programmer she ended her executive career as CEO of a software house after carrying out an MBO. The company went from strength to strength, acquiring another company to expand. Then it was sold to Misys.

At that point Rogers went from being CEO of her own company to being one of 28 MD's. 'Well I went from the sublime to the ridiculous. When you run your own company you have to know a bit about everything. When you are part of a large plc there's always someone you can turn to for support.

'There may be nothing like the pressure on you but nor is there the excitement and satisfaction.'

She stayed for two years with Misys. At the age of 46, having made herself financially secure with the sale of her company, Rogers decided to retire. That only lasted eight weeks. 'It was the lack of mental stimulation that did for me.' And then the phone rang. VC giant 3i, which had backed her initial MBO, was looking for a new Non-Exec. It was perfect. Since that call her second career as a Non-Exec Chairman ('And it is Chairman, none of that 'Chair' nonsense.') has snowballed.

She has now completed more than 20 Chairmanships of PE backed IT companies, and has found the Non Exec world to be every bit as satisfying and demanding as her first career. And every bit as successful.

When asked what the secret of success is, Rogers lists three things to look at: 'First, and definitely foremost, is the management team. You have to have the right people - or at least think that you can bring in the right people.

'Then it is the market. There must be a market opportunity. The business must be in a market that has the potential for growth.

'And finally there has to be something different about the company - a differentiator. I see a lot of business plans that frankly I just don't get. And if I don't get it in the first two pages of the business plan, then I am not going to be interested. You see a lot of three-inch thick plans because, for some reason, people think you have to fill them with all this stuff. Well I can tell you that if you haven't sold it in the first couple of sides, no one is going to read any further.'

As a woman in a man's world, Rogers thinks her sex has helped her. 'At least people tend to remember you,' but refuses to play the gender politics game. 'There are successful women and successful men. The women who don't succeed are those that try to be successful men. If there is a glass ceiling then I have certainly never encountered it.'

She does think that women have some advantages as Non-Execs. 'As a Non Exec you have no power, only influence. Well women are better at using their influence to get what they want. When meeting with a CEO they are less likely to be threatened by a woman, it is less of an alpha-male thing. If they don't feel threatened then you can get a lot more done. And when you have only influence you must be able to persuade'.

Rogers has strong views about women on boards of directors. ‘I absolutely disagree with the notion of positive discrimination to make the genders equal on boards. This is the worst thing that could happen to women. There must be a meritocracy at all levels in business. To have women on boards who have not got there on merit but are there to make up the numbers, must be wrong and will do the cause of women no good at all.

She adds ‘Women are so fortunate. They can choose  how much they are involved with their careers & their children. Men do not have that luxury. I have 3 sons and at one stage was a one parent family. But I have always regarded my problems with childcare to be exactly that – my problems, they were never my employers’. If I can achieve what I have in business, with my background, then anyone can. But don’t expect to get there without hard work & sacrifice. Choose what you want and do it well. Women, like anyone else, should make it as Directors because they deserve  to. Don’t ask for special treatment, because of gender, one minute & equality the next. Equality means fairness and meritocracy.’