Exceptional Female Role Models - Hannah Awonuga

Exceptional Female Role Models

Hannah Awonuga is the Global Head of Colleague Engagement, Group Diversity & Inclusion at Barclays. She is responsible for the global strategic oversight of the firm's Employee Resource Group structure with over 25,000 unique colleagues members across the UK, USA & APAC.

Hannah started her banking career as a school leaver and aged 20 secured a place on the Barclays-sponsored degree programme and became a Management & Leadership graduate, before progressing through business banking to move into Group D&I.

Hannah is an award winning passionate and intentional Diversity and Inclusion thought leader who drives cultural change and inclusion to contribute towards a world of equity and parity. Her focus is on leading, developing, and recognising top, diverse talent while providing expert strategic direction on global DEI initiatives, including the global socio-economic inclusion strategy, business partnering with employee relations and international oversight of the colleague engagement plan.

In 2017, she founded Rarity London Inclusion and Career Development Services – a coaching service that focuses on female career growth development and organisational inclusive leadership development.

In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Rising Star of the Year at the Black Women in Business Awards; in 2021, she was a Rising Star Banking & Capital Markets winner at the WeAreTheCity Awards, and named as an inspirational diversity and inclusion leader by D&I LEADERS. She is a wife and proud mum of 3 children.

Can we start by understanding more about your background?

I am one of 4 kids born to Nigerian parents who emigrated to the UK in the early 80s.

Born in Bermondsey, I initially grew up living with some family in Dorset before returning to London aged 5 to live with my parents.

As Nigerian immigrants trying to navigate a new life, my family went through some challenges and as a result I had to move into independent living at the age of 14

When I turned 16, I was given an ultimatum that either I start a job or return to live in Dorset. I decided to work, and my first ever job was working as a cashier at the Halifax Building Society. I’ll never forget my interview with them – I turned up in a hoody and jeans and still remember wondering why all the other candidates had dressed in suits! I was truly oblivious to the ways of the corporate world.

I’m still grateful to the lady who gave me a chance that day – all I had to talk about was the time I had spent as a prefect at high school, but she saw something in me that made her want to gamble on my potential.

After about a year, I was contemplating my career and ended up getting an interview with Barclays, by now I had 12 months experience at the Halifax that I was able to add to my CV, and I ended up joining them to work in personal banking.

I did this role for a couple of years, ended up running my own branch, then did the Barclays-sponsored degree programme and became a Management & Leadership graduate, before progressing through business banking to a move into Group D&I, where I currently am Global Head of Colleague Engagement.

What skills do you wish you had learned earlier in life?

Relationship building is very important.

When I was younger, I felt like I had to solve every problem alone, I felt like I had to graft and that everything was against me - so it was up to me to prove to everyone that I could do everything.

As my career developed, I realised the power of having people on your side and developing strong relationships.

I started to embody a new mantra of?‘follow up and follow through’ when it came to relationship building.

Every time I met somebody that I was inspired by, I followed up with them. I shared my feedback on how they had done something that had impacted me, then I would ask them for a time for a coffee chat.

Every time I was doing a piece of work or giving a presentation say, and somebody gave me some positive feedback, I followed up with them. I would engage them afterwards and ask for a time for a coffee chat.

I’ve realised that regularly throughout each week people are presenting us all with opportunities or doors which we can choose to open, but we often miss these by not following up or following through.

Role models are very powerful, and I encourage all my mentees to give ‘follow up and follow through’ a try. Start to be intentional about developing relationships with role models who might be able to give you some mentoring advice, but more importantly who might develop into sponsors who can start talking about you in rooms behind closed doors.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

When you think about developing your career, understand that sometimes you have to go sideways to move upwards.

Think more about the breadth of your experience. How can you gain different experience and pick up a greater range of skills?

You can’t always see what doors may open further down the road, and potentially the skillset you are developing today might not translate into the opportunity that presents itself. So start to focus today on thinking about ‘where are my gaps?’ ‘what have I never done before?’

We can have a tendency to think of our careers as linear, but actually they very rarely are. You need to be prepared to try new things and explore, then you will see that unexpected opportunities arise and the greater breadth to your skillset will better equip you to take advantage of these.

What is the biggest life lesson you have learned?

Own your truth.

Even today when I was answering your question about how I ended up leaving home at 14, I was still apprehensive about sharing. This was my life, this is the truth of how I started out. What I am still learning is the power of being comfortable bringing my authentic self to any situation and owning my truth.

We often find that people who come from a lower socioeconomic background struggle with confidence and they usually just want to feel like they ‘fit in’ – especially if they are like me and start working in a corporate headquarters for a global bank amongst majority white privileged middle-class colleagues.

When I moved into my first head office role in Canary Wharf, nobody sounded like me, nobody looked like me and nobody came from the same background as me. I genuinely felt like a fish out of water.

I never succumbed to the temptation to fake who I was though, what I did instead was focus on the person I wanted to become, and I worked very hard to make that vision my reality.

I went on a journey of discovery and self-reflection. I knew I had always wanted to work in a bank, I knew I loved working in a corporate professional setting, I knew I loved getting dressed up in corporate attire and I have truly loved building my brand clothes. After years of self-discovery, I knew who I wanted to become.

I passionately believe that social mobility and socioeconomic inclusion is the intersection across all D&I agendas – there is no colour or gender or sexual orientation or able-bodiedness associated with socioeconomic inclusion (although there are definitely links between race and disability with social mobility).

I am really passionate about helping people from under-represented groups. I have often described this as a desire to be a ‘voice for the voiceless’. Somebody challenged me about this recently and asked me why I refer to these people as voiceless, they said that these people do have a voice they just are not using it.

So now I think my refined mission is more that I want to ‘empower other people to find their voice’.

I’ve now developed more confidence to just be able to say ‘this is me’. Own your truth.

How important have mentors, sponsors or role models been to you in your journey?

For a long time I struggled to find role models, I really didn’t see people who looked like me in senior positions. So for a long time I really didn’t know whether it was possible for me to achieve things and become senior in my workplace.

I eventually learned to not limit my own expectations of myself around what I couldn’t see. I decided instead to focus on becoming the first. I changed the mantra to ‘if I don’t see it, then I will become it’.

I even became a Governor at the secondary school that I attended. That same school where as a troubled student the teachers did not believe in my potential or my abilities.

I appreciate that naming some of the people that have impacted my journey means I’m no doubt forgetting people along the way that were still important to me. So for everybody who invested time in me, I am truly grateful.

But the first person who springs to mind is the person who gave me my first leadership role – Carol Layzell. Back in my early retail banking days she gave me my first branch manager position – at 21 years old! I was shocked at the time and couldn’t believe it, but it ended up being the best experience I have ever had.

One of my leaders, Folake Johnson, really pushed and challenged me, but she also recognised when I was doing well and encouraged me to explore other opportunities outside her own team. She actually helped me obtain shadowing and work placements with other departments that were instrumental in me gaining my next role. I owe a lot to her.

When I think about women that I look up to today, Bukola Adisa, CEO OF Careermasterclass, is a huge inspiration to me. She was an MD at Barclays who decided to leave the bank to focus on developing and building careers for professionals from diverse backgrounds.

I have had a number of people in my life that I would class as mentors, interestingly both male and female, also white and people from diverse backgrounds. These are the people who have kept me on the straight and narrow path, they helped me iron out some of the cracks that I had because of my socioeconomic background.

They helped me understand how to talk to senior leaders, how to communicate over email, how to give powerful presentations, how to be passionate and advocate for something you feel strongly about.

These people helped me learn, adapt and grow to be able to bring my best self to my work.

One example of an individual who spent a lot of time on this with me is Mike Thompson. He supported me around these important nuanced skills and had a great impact on my journey.

In my opinion though, we are only ever going to really move the dial in our advocacy for people from under-represented groups when we truly tackle the concept of sponsorship. If society doesn’t understand the importance of people championing diverse talent, then we are going to struggle to achieve meaningful change.

A discreet tap on the shoulder, to put people forward and vouch for them, to connect someone with a useful contact in your own network is not always common within ethnically diverse communities.

If I could only shout out one person, it would be Rebecca McNeil, she was my sponsor and she didn’t even know me. She had one interaction with me when I was delivering a presentation to 400 people and she was in the audience.

She was the Chief Operating Officer of the Business Bank at that time, and she simply commented that she liked the dress I was wearing. I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that pass me by!...I followed up and I followed through.

The next day I sent her an email that literally said ‘Hi Rebecca, I’m the lady who you told you liked my dress, I’d love to have a conversation with you’!

I told her about my career aspirations and she connected me with one of her Heads with an introductory note, and two months later I had transferred to that team.

My learning from this is: always follow up and follow through (!), secondly, the power of sponsorship and senior people being prepared to spend some of their political capital in vouching for somebody hungry for a chance is so very powerful.

This all happened fast, but I do now explain to my mentees that they should view sponsorship as a two-way street that probably takes 6-12 months to develop. The importance of really showcasing to potential sponsors the quality of your work and making these people confident that they can feel comfortable putting their name behind you.

What other advocacy projects are you involved with?

Back in 2017, I founded Rarity London Inclusion and Career Development Services to support professional women who are ready to take their careers to the next level. With sixteen years of financial services?and ten years in leadership,?I now have experience in recruiting, career development, managing stakeholders, and developing a personal brand.?

Throughout my career, I have had the privileged of helping women understand their strengths and map out how they can achieve job satisfaction. I have experience developing women who are starting their careers, looking for new opportunities, negotiating pay, or breaking glass ceilings.

I push women to be the leader in their career. I coach how to explore your full potential whilst providing women with strategies to help them manage upwards and get what they want, whilst exploring factors inside and outside of work that often influence career success.

I help women develop a fruitful and rewarding career, to prepare for their next promotion, meeting or interview, right through to discovering their personal style and branding.?

I am a mum of three and have been married for 10 yrs. I have suffered mum guilt when I miss a school assembly or work guilt when I can't attend a colleague’s leaving do. Whilst it is still a work in progress for me, I have learned a lot about how to balance life and work.

I am also in the process of self-publishing a 200-page career guide journal centred around supporting career professional to own their careers and work on their own development. The journal aims to equip women with the tools nobody tells you that will need to develop in the professional world – things like how to prepare for your mid-year review; how to get yourself mentors and sponsors and the importance of gaining 360 feedback etc.

In 2022, my aim is to connect young aspiring women to successful women who look, sound and come from the same background as them. I want to set-up a coaching programme specifically focussed on helping young women aged 16-25. I think these are the critical years in your life where the decisions you make will impact the whole of the rest of your life.

What does success mean to you now?

I now measure my success by the amount of people I can impact.

I want to use my voice to impact other people, whilst also being a great role model for my kids. I truly want to work hard so that one day my daughter can grow up with the goal to be CEO of a British bank, and that be possible for her to achieve…if she wants to!