IWD2025: Change Maker Sophie Pullen leads the fight for women executives

When a woman has a baby, she’s expected to adapt to the fundamental shift in mind and body – and get on with it.

Sophie Pullen knows because she’s had two, and her youngest is still a babe in arms.

“We support teenagers going through adolescence – we don’t expect them to get everything right,” she says.

“But you go from being a businesswoman to a mum – this massive physical and psychological change – and you are expected magically to just figure it out.”

How women cope with the extra mental load of motherhood and still progress at work matters to Sophie.

She is now Senior Vice President at WeQual, a company that supports professional women and promotes gender equality at leadership level.

Challenges are well documented – just 10 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have a female chief executive and progress is glacial. If businesses continue at the current rate, it will take another 125 years before they reach an equal gender split – too long for Sophie’s own daughters to benefit.

Women still don’t go for top roles because they’re perfectionists, or they believe the sacrifice is too great or the juggling act too daunting, she says.

Since becoming a mother, Sophie’s changed jobs, sought flexibility and is strict about her time off.

“I will be concentrating on raising a small human,” her out of-office message reads. If she has an intellectual challenge, she’ll tackle it at the start of the day – her “thinking time”. Crucially, her husband does his share.

She’s proud to describe herself as ambitious and prefers to tackle the world head-on. “I’m like a rhino: I run into barriers and knock them down. It may sound crude, but I want to be successful in all walks of life and help others around me to achieve the same.”

Using an MBA to drive change

Happily – for the business world, at least – her application to become a firefighter as a young graduate was delayed by a recruitment freeze in the service, and by the time an offer came through she’d chosen a more lucrative career. “I was on the brink of a big deal; I couldn’t turn that down.”

Since then, she’s worked in sales strategy and operations at the likes of consultancy firm Leyton and online property portal Zoopla.

She’s helped digitalise business and harness the emerging powers of AI, implementing algorithms to streamline information to identify and improve sales opportunities.

With success under her belt, and a newly acquired MBA, she was headhunted for her current role at WeQual – which she gladly accepted, sacrificing her consultant’s salary to work for a company that aims to change the business world.

Sophie applied to business school only because she required some sort of postgraduate education to be eligible to apply for a company role in the US. Her then-employer was opening an office in California and she wanted to lead operations.

“The irony was I decided to change jobs after the MBA,” she says.

Warwick Business School (WBS) impressed her both with a more equal split of women and men and a willingness to offer more flexibility than a couple of the London schools she considered.

She and her husband were thinking of starting a family, and, with full-time work responsibilities to juggle, this was crucial.

“WBS were totally open and dispelled any concerns that I would be overwhelmed,” says Sophie. “Talking to them, I felt it was doable.”

It was more than doable – Sophie went on to have a baby during the two-year Executive MBA, and graduated in the top 10 per cent, despite having to condense her course in order to complete it before her baby arrived.

“I was pretty pleased,” she says. “WBS helped me work out the best combination of modules to suit my time.”

While she had already studied business as an undergraduate, an MBA gave her far more than nuts and bolts, as well as the chance to meet like-minded business executives.

“These are people we would put on pedestals, but, in person, you realise they’re on the same wavelength.”

Increasing representation in senior leadership

Today, she’s hopeful WeQual will progress in its bid to shift the dial on women’s representation at the top of the largest companies through a practical approach to coaching, development and recognising high-achieving women across the globe.

Women who’ve taken part say WeQual’s programmes are transformative.

“They often say how powerful it is to be part of a network, and realise they are not alone in their fight,” says Sophie.

An awards programme run by WeQual raises the profile of senior women – 36 per cent of award winners go on to sit on an executive committee and this visibility matters.

“You need a voice at the table,” she says.

A growing body of research demonstrates the business benefits of a more diverse leadership team and these reach beyond the bottom line.

Employees are more engaged in companies that promote and prioritise diversity, and companies with more women on their boards perform better environmentally.

There are signs of progress. Sophie is jubilant at the recent victory of female shop-floor staff at UK retailer Next after a six-year battle for equal wages and back pay – although Next will appeal.

“Back pay might be disruptive for industry but we do need this kind of radical action if we want equal pay to become the norm,” says Sophie.

New EU legislation will force European companies to report their gender pay gap – which UK companies have been required to do since 2017.

But she’s dismayed by the trend in the US to begin ditching corporate leaders of equality, diversity and inclusion and downgrade its importance.

She says: “There’s a tendency to think the battle is won, we don’t need to discuss it any more. I say: are you joking? It’s still a man’s world. And that has to change.”

Meet more of Warwick Business School’s Change Makers.