A career less ordinary

In her first job, Catherine Hokin said her employers were looking for a maverick team with “people who were gobby and didn’t realise you had to play by the rules”.
dominated fields, often requiring her to draw upon skills she had never used before.
When she and her husband Robert founded ecoConnect in 2009, with the aim of creating “the largest green business support network in the UK”, it followed varied roles including marketing the Top Man brand to Premier League football clubs, as researcher and speechwriter for Glenys Kinnock, and even teaching at Windsor Boys’ School.
Giving themselves an initial 18 months to see if they could do it, the company aimed to promote businesses which wanted to create Cleantech (or clean technology) and attract investment.
ecoConnect, which they hoped would be something that promoted the environment without “being Swampy”, took off, and they now run regular networking events that have attracted top industry names and government officials or ministers as well as their own Cleantech awards,
In order to give the business a firmer Scottish presence, a new office was opened near to Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park last September, and Hokin and her husband also moved to the city, while still spending four to five days back in London.
Since then the business, a not-for-profit company, has been nominated for the 2014 Edinburgh Business Awards and has been building its profile as part of the burgeoning Scottish renewable technology sector.
Sitting in Glasgow’s Urban Brasserie, Hokin tells Holyrood that once again, working in a male-dominated field, she believes it is important for women to act as role models to inspire others to follow.
This is not an opinion she has idly come to. In London, she chairs the Women in Cleantech forum and she has spoken too at events organised by WiRES – Women in Renewable Energy Scotland and says the representation of women in her field is “conflicted”.
When organising ecoConnect’s own awards for Cleantech two years ago, she describes how one panellist asked whether she would be leaving the room after she had served the coffee.
“When I started out working for the Post Office, I used to go to networking events and maybe 10 per cent of the room was female,” she says.
“The rest of it was men in grey suits and when we started doing events for ecoConnect it was no different – about 15 per cent of the room were female.”
She says that at ecoConnect’s own events, the women sitting on panels are mostly from the policy side of things as opposed to those speaking on the development and technology side.
She admits to not knowing what the basic issues are that are holding some women back and says she has dealt particularly with many female entrepreneurs involved in the sector,
She adds: “I was very irritated a while ago by being in the room with a woman – very senior – who said: ‘I never have any problems because I just conduct my business like a man’.
“There’s a lot of that attitude being prevalent and I think it puts women off.”
Her basic attitude is that if you are good at what you do, people will treat you with respect – but she adds that for some time when setting the business up people mistook her for her husband’s PA. Even though he took the title CEO, the project is very much a joint venture.
She says it is up to women to serve as role models and inspire others.
“I do think we have a responsibility to other women to pave the way and change thinking. That is something sometimes women find challenging. If you’re the only one – every organisation I have worked in has been very male dominated.
“You have to be a role model, but if you’re the only one, sometimes you don’t want to be singled out either – I’ve had resistance to Women in Cleantech from other women who don’t want to be associated with an all-women group because men in their organisation will laugh at them.”
Six weeks after she and Robert came up with the idea for their new business, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
While she is now a year cancer-free, she says it is not something she talks about much and is keen to stress that while it may sound “superwomany”, it isn’t.
“I don’t really talk about the cancer thing because people can make it into an ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing, you’ve got through all these challenges’.
“It was more screaming, hysteria, bad temper and red wine that went into it than courage.”
This attitude though is part of what Hokin sees as being important in being a good role model – being honest.
“Most women I know are working incredibly hard, juggling family and work. They have a sense of humour and they would be good role models if they had more confidence – but they don’t always push themselves forward.”
Much of her career has been spent in male-dominated industries and she says while at times this could be intimidating, it has not held her back.
While working for the Burton Group and pushing the Top Man brand, she worked alongside Premier League football clubs, such as Liverpool and Watford, in the early 90s, a notoriously male-dominated area.
“They were accommodating,” she says. “And the reason they were was I didn’t go in on any other basis than I was a serious professional to be taken seriously.
“I didn’t go in with a short skirt or any of that nonsense – but I didn’t go in dour and boring either.
“I’m a big football fan, so that helped – there was some common ground.”
However, she adds: “I’m not naïve enough to think it’s easy for women – it’s not.
“When I was 24 I was working in Halifax and would open my locker and there would be a Page 3 somebody had stuck there to see if it would upset me.
“It did upset me – I was bloody furious – but there was no point in showing it. What I did try to do was not ignore it.
“I would not get upset, not get angry, but would say, ‘why did you do that?’
“There’s a balance between a little bit of humour and a little bit of firmness.”cleantech 2014
While on maternity leave at the Burton Group she was made redundant although admits the job she was doing “with the best will in the world I couldn’t have done with a kid.”
It led her into the world of politics, first working for the Labour Party, standing for election as a councillor in Twickenham and Richmond and then working for Glenys Kinnock, who was then a Labour MEP, as a researcher and speechwriter.
She spent about 18 months with Kinnock and said she remains a “huge fan”.
“The thing that struck me about her,” says Hokin, “was that she started from the basis that people would treat her with respect because she deserved it and she had earned it.”
Hokin adds: “She had a very clear political mandate of her own. She didn’t suffer fools in any way, but she managed to combine that with a really strong level of charm.”
Her time there included a study of performances of UK schools against others in Europe, which was due to be launched at the party’s conference, but this was cancelled by then leader Tony Blair as it included a call for grammar schools to be abolished.
Hokin says: “It was a very good education for me because I’ve always found politics quite confrontational. [Glenys Kinnock] was able to get exactly what she wanted through incredible negotiation skills – she really taught me that.”
She adds: “It was a strange career trajectory but a huge amount of skills were being built and one of the things I’ve been saying to a lot of the younger women in WiRES is you have to see your career as skills progressions, not as a logical progression sometimes.”
She says too she is more concerned about being a good role model for her children – her eldest daughter has graduated from Glasgow University and Robert’s daughter is currently studying there, while her son has started university in Manchester.
And she adds: “Also, we’ve got a 25-year-old events coordinator in her first job and I’ve been very concerned about being a role model for her.
“If public speaking offers come in, I always take her because there’s always this preconception that women don’t do public speaking.”
She says things have already “massively changed” and will continue to do so and that the issue of gender can’t be separated from the way businesses are going to run in the future.
“More and more, never mind companies, but countries, are going to have to work collaboratively,” she said.
“There has to be a whole new way of thinking and we have to acknowledge there can be an imbalance between ‘feminine’ management skills – if we can call it that – and ‘masculine’ management skills.
“So collaborating and listening skills are really at the fore, perhaps, more than the more ego-driven, otherwise we’re going to be fighting over the last drop of water, aren’t we?”