Marked annually on March 8th, International Women’s Day (IWD) is an opportunity to celebrate and commemorate the achievements of women, and to celebrate, we’re thrilled to introduce our International Women’s Day Series – Daring to Lead. Over the next week we’ll be catching up with some of Incubeta’s female leadership team to hear their expectations for 2021, and how they’ll be ‘Choosing to Challenge’ this March.

To kick off the series we sat down with Sally Laycock, Incubeta UK’s new Chief Executive Officer to see what she’s most excited about in 2021.

1. If you could describe yourself in three words, for the benefit of those that aren’t familiar with you, what would you say and why?

Working Digital Mum! I am a mum of two boys and two beagle girls, and I am continually juggling my love and passion for work with my awesome family!

2. As the new UK CEO, what are you most excited about in 2021 – both from a personal sense and work sense?

From a personal perspective, I am excited for my kids to return to school to learn and see their friends (I would definitely receive an “needs improvement” rating from OFSTED). I am also looking forward to having a pint at the pub and going on holiday with my family.

Workwise, I am most excited about returning to the office (it has been 11 months!) and meeting some of our staff face to face for the first time. I can’t wait to actually do company meetings in person and not see 100+ people in tiny squares on Meets each week.

I’m also excited to bring our new services to the forefront of our business and make them an integral part of our core services. I’m keen to see the value that our new Consultancy Solutions layer (launching soon) will bring to our clients.

3. Where is there opportunity for growth at Incubeta? 

We are expecting a lot of growth to be driven from our services in their infancy stage in the UK. These services include Creative, SEO, feed management, training and Seamless Search.

We also expect to see a material growth from our DQ&A side of the business (45% growth). We expect our mature Agency and Performance to continue to provide a solid base upon which will allow us to continue to invest in new services.

4. How do you plan to act upon your existing passion for diversity and inclusion within the workplace? Will we see any changes to Incubeta’s current culture model?

I do not want the culture to change at Incubeta. I think our award winning culture is what makes us who we are. I will however use the strong base we already have, to build upon our existing culture. I want to take diversity and inclusion to the next level. Ensuring we continue to measure our progress and continue to provide more platforms where people feel safe to talk openly about their experiences so that others can learn. I also want to make sure we never become a business that makes a lot of noise about diversity and inclusion with little action (there are far too many businesses out there that do this). I want to continue being authentic and committed to the cause!

Finally I would love to see what we have achieved already from a diversity perspective in the UK, be used to support the rest of our group on their diversity and inclusion journey.

5. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Choose to Challenge’ & as Incubeta’s first UK female CEO how will you celebrate women’s achievements, & strive for gender equality within the business? 

I think we’re making fantastic strides in the UK business when it comes to gender equality and we are starting to see this coming through in our data. We even have an  upcoming event  focusing on analytics with a 75% female panel, which shows how much the industry is changing!

However there is still a lot more we need to do to progress. We need to pay particular attention to ensure women are represented at the various management layers and we are looking at a number of initiatives to see how we can ensure this happens. I will also be working closely with our Group CEO Lars and the global Steering Committee to ensure gender equality at a group level is addressed.

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To learn more about Sally, and hear her overarching goals for Incubeta in 2021, have a look at our recent article Incubeta Ignite: Introducing Sally Laycock, Incubeta’s UK CEO, where she sat down with Justin Pearse from New Digital Age to discuss her journey to CEO.