Welsh-born Richards became one of two new non-executive directors (alongside Tim Griffin) in April 2015 and is now approaching the two year mark of her tenure in the Boardroom of Welsh rugby’s governing body.
A former executive vice-president of Mars Incorporated, she spent 30 years with the global chocolate, gum, confectionery, petcare and drinks business, in a total of thirteen different jobs across three countries and on two continents.
Whilst the thirty five billion dollar turnover company only features in the ‘War of the Worlds’ musical due to its astrological namesake – Richards does admit life with Mars was a world away from Welsh rugby.
She describes her rise to a ‘very senior position’ with the corporation in a typically understated way, as a product of ‘hard work’, but she acknowledges that achieving success in business as a woman carried – and still carries – its own unique set of challenges.
Her role placed her as number two in the whole organisation behind the overall chief executive. At 56 she retired and returned to London from the US, joining the WRU Board in her first non-executive director role.
Richards is fascinating, generous and humble when she talks about her own career and she becomes determined and resolute when she discusses the latest strategies the WRU is employing to modernise its governance structure and encourage women to rise through its ranks.
So, what brought her to Welsh Rugby, how has she found it and what does the future hold – particularly for women who may wish to tread its corridors of power?
In the manner of Dylan Thomas we asked her ‘to begin at the beginning’:
“I spent 30 years as a female manager and ended up in a very senior position,” she said.
“Of course I didn’t start in a senior position, so I had to work my way up and take personal risks by moving jobs, moving house, moving country and taking ‘complaining’ children with me.
“I had to constantly learn and take on new responsibilities, I worked in Human Resources, I worked in IT, I worked in purchasing and manufacturing, so got that breadth of experience and I had to work hard and make that commitment.
“On the other side I was very fortunate to work in a company that supported me, who believed in women managers.
“When I lost my confidence they pulled me up, they suggested me for jobs that I would never have dreamt of applying for myself.
“I became a director of our European Board when I was on maternity leave.
“Someone rang me up and said you should apply and I said ‘no way I’m on maternity leave’ and they said ‘you should apply’ and that was a man who said that to me.
“It was those gestures, those are the sort of inflection points in women’s careers and that’s why I am saying now that mentoring and support of people in the organisation is important, because some of those points made a big difference to my confidence and courage to go after some of these roles that I did.”
Think rugby in Wales.
Think club-houses, think grass pitches, white lines, corner flags, kit bags, coffee flasks, water bottles, mouth-guards, shaved legs, muscles, tackles, tussles, catches, passes, kicks and balls…
There’s also boardroom battles, Regional clashes, referee interaction and international selection, match-day madness, play-off potential, parental pride, paternal protection, family values and singing long and loud with oodles of passion…
Did you think men or women or both?
Now think about the Board of the Welsh Rugby Union.
For many the second thought will be quicker to come by and possibly different, but the WRU want both answers to be the same – they want the Board to entirely reflect the game.
The cliché is that the Board is made up of men in dusty old blazers far removed from the day to day issues which face the game, but Welsh Rugby is modernising at Board level and Richards – although noted as an integral and proven board member first and woman second – cannot escape the conclusion that she is a talismanic presence in the process.
She has no wish to become a figure-head or a token of change, rather she is a trailblazer and cannot hide her passion for the WRU’s plan to increase female involvement at every level of the game in Wales, including the Boardroom.
“I am a woman and I’m sure there was some scepticism at first from some of the Board members when I joined, but it’s only natural, like in any new job you have to prove yourself,” she said.
“In general you have to demonstrate you can add value and make a contribution and that leads to acceptance over time.
“But there has absolutely been an attitude change already, the first was that the Board actually went out and looked for two independent non-executive directors.
“That was an attitude change, they wanted, if possible, for one of them to be a woman so that had already happened before I joined.
“As I’ve proven myself and made a contribution and brought some different thoughts and ideas I’ve definitely seen even more of an attitude change.
“We now have a succession document for people to the Board which specifies the skills we are looking for and it specifies we want to be diverse on the Board.
“Three quarters of the board appointments come from our districts and our clubs, so we need them to partner with us in increasing the diversity on the Board.
“That means that they need to find the great women they have in the clubs who are doing a great job, but are probably under represented, the unsung heroes who don’t have the high profile, and work with the WRU to develop those females to be the successes of the future.
“If you look at the number of women playing, the great statistic we have is that we have doubled the amount of women and girls players in the last year.
“There’s tremendous enthusiasm from that and we have a strategy to support it, we are putting resources against it and expertise and building it.
“Some clubs, not all because there are some fantastic clubs out there, but some need to have a governance structure that reflects this change over time.
“Whilst the WRU Board members are coming from that structure, clearly we need those women to be rising through the game, partly because they need to be running and encouraging the women’s game over time too.”
So, the Welsh Rugby Union has been thinking about women.
In 2017 the modern face of rugby in Wales, in crowds, junior club-houses and on the pitches is becoming as much female as it is male.
Change is afoot, but what specifically will the WRU be doing to facilitate this modernisation, when and how will we start to notice a difference and how long will it take?
“One of the things that we have done already, as well as trying to bring more women into the game, is to bring more young people into the fold,” Richards continued.
“We now have a Youth Board which advises the Board on how we should be driving the strategy for the youth rugby in the future.
“We have 15 people on that of the ages between 16 and 21 and we are really proud to say that there is a pretty even split on that Board in terms of male and female representation and potentially in the future that could be a source of talent for us going forward.
“Another easy way to do it, not that any of this is easy, would be to bring in a woman as another independent non-executive like myself, but the most challenging bit and the bit we really need to pay attention to is to bring women up from the clubs.
“Rugby is growing at club level and women’s and girls’ rugby is growing, but we need role models on the governance side so our energy needs to go into the clubs to find the women to help bring them through.
“That will take time, because it’s not been historically how governance has been managed in the clubs and that’s what we have to focus on in my opinion.”
Time will be a significant factor, but it should not be a disheartening one says Richards, who can see parallels with the business world but is keen to point out that sport is a different proposition and is starting from a different place.
She also brings an empathy for the plight of any women or girls who may find their ambitions frustrated and, like the phone calls she had on maternity leave encouraging her to apply for new roles, she strongly believes in proactively encouraging women:
“One of the things you need to remember in the WRU and in sport is that these things take time.
“I joined Mars in 1985 and, to be honest, it was a very different world then.
“For Mars in the UK 10-per-cent of our managers were female, 25-years later it was 50-per-cent, so that tells you about the level of change that was going on.
“It was driven by a good organisation which recognised that, actually, you can run a better business and get better results if you have a diverse set of leaders in your business.
“It will take time to develop females through a club, just as through any organisation or politics or whatever it is, because you’ve got to give them experiences.
“Most particularly I think with women you’ve got to give them confidence, mentoring and encouragement because, from research, we know that some of the things senior women need to develop are different from some of the things senior men need.
“Business is ahead, but that’s because it started earlier, I don’t think it’s because of the inherent nature of it all.
“Some sports are starting later because of the nature of the sport, if you look at rugby for a long time this was a game predominantly played by men in XVs.
“Now, our current strategy is that we want to increase the amount of involvement and the amount of participation.
“The largest part of our growth is coming from women and girls in the sport and that’s why we need to change some of our governance structure, but that hasn’t historically been the case.
“I do think sport needs to learn from business, which is ahead, but actually business has a long way to go as well in some instances.”
Richards has the credentials, the personal experience and she is in a position of power to help effect change, so how is it going to be done?
Should there be quotas to ensure a certain amount of women progress, for example? Richards says not. She is happy that, with the correct support and encouragement, the right people will come forward.
“Our belief is that we need to have the right skills and we have recently done a big exercise in terms of skill profiles,” she says.
“Asking, what are the right skills we need for the Board, where are we going to get them from and within that process there is the strong recognition that we need to include women.
“It’s not so important how many, only clearly it would be better to have more than one.
“So there’s no support for quotas, but we have the absolute commitment to drive the skills agenda, drive the diversity profile, not just women, and that needs to lead over time to having more females represented on the Board.
“The first thing is to persuade people it’s the right thing to do, which we have done at Board level.
“We have to persuade that we will run a better Board, a better business a better parliament, whatever it is, because it’s more diverse.
“That’s what we have to put our first energy into – building that belief within our clubs.
“Having done that, all the research shows that women are less confident in standing for positions in whatever field it is.
“So I do think it’s important for clubs to understand that – because they are the ones who are electing and have the responsibility and the control to encourage and support women to stand for these roles.
“That applies whether the roles are at club level or for the Board, because typically women will select themselves out, unless someone is encouraging them to do it and there’s plenty of research to show this is the case.
“Once we have decided it’s the right thing to do, then we have to start when people are young and have belief and confidence.
“We need people onside, mentoring developing women’s careers encouraging them, helping put confidence into them and having training programmes for them to make it work.
“Also, actually for the women themselves, they have to go and get the right experience, because you need that and you have to get the right skills, so it’s quite complicated, there’s no silver bullet in this area.
“It will take time so we have to be patient and maintain the same strategy.
“It’s not like this is going to be solved next year and it doesn’t need to be. I’ve talked about the Mars story, it took 25 years to make a massive change so you have to be consistent and persistent with a strategy like this.”
So, quotas are off the agenda, Richards would rather set targets to be achieved, but she is adamant that change will and must take place.
The current Board combines external business expertise with a passion for Welsh rugby and consists of a 20-strong board of directors: 14 individuals elected from districts; three elected national directors, two non-elected directors (Aileen and Tim Griffin) and the group chief executive.
“Quotas and targets are different,” she explains. “You need a target in terms of an intention, because if you don’t have an intention then you don’t measure your progress and, surprise, surprise not much is going to happen.
“So I don’t want to sound all soft, as you are going to have to be clear and go after it, because nothing will change if you don’t, but I think you have to take people with you and that’s true in anything.
“Particularly in sport when there are a lot of stakeholders. There are a lot of fantastic volunteers out in the clubs who are in this transition, from the way the world was in the male dominated rugby scene to now.
“We have a responsibility to recognise that things are changing. We have to take people with us and we have to do so through the power of persuasion, because that’s the right thing to do.”
So, what has it been like being the first woman, since the inception of the WRU in 1881, to sit on its Board and what would Aileen Richards say to those who will follow in her footsteps?
What does she think are the chances of more women in rugby’s corridors of power in the near future?
“As someone who grew up in Cardiff and is a fanatical Wales supporter, this was an ideal way to marry my business experience as a senior woman together with my passion for Wales and for Welsh rugby,” she concludes.
“It’s not as strange and different as people think it is, most of Welsh Rugby recognises that it’s a positive to bring someone in from a different world, provided they are open to understanding the rugby world, and of course I’ve been supporting since I was seven years old – when I went to my first international.
“My husband played rugby for years, both my kids played rugby, so it’s not rugby that’s alien to me it’s just the governance of the WRU Board I had to learn, in order to make the optimum contribution.
“In my case, the whole point of bringing in an independent non-executive is that they do come from somewhere different, because actually if you just want the same views then you bring someone from that world.
“But, like anything when you come in, you’ve got to learn quite a lot and make sure you seek first to understand, before challenging because things are done differently or could be done differently.
“My sense is that, yes there is a lack of women in these positions around Wales, because why would Wales be any different for the rest of the world?
“There is still an under representation, things are getting better than before, but there is still some way to go…”
The WRU recently published its 10-year ‘Strategy for Welsh Rugby’ (available here http://www.wru.co.uk/eng/thewru/our-strategy-for-welsh-rugby.php ), its opening section discusses Culture, Leadership and Governance – the stated aim under Governance reads:
“We have a responsibility to be agile and inclusive. We will implement the right governance systems and structures with suitably qualified individuals who are reflective of modern society.”
