Debra Johnson

"My personality types are Campaigner, Innovator and Influencer. These fit my current role very well as I continuously look to improve how teams work together so we can deliver faster and better products to our customers. I have to influence many people to change the way they currently do things so we can keep improving. And most people do not like change, so I have to be very persuasive and look to overcome many obstacles. "

"I am a banking Technology Transformation manager - I look for and help teams implement better ways of working to improve the quality and speed with which they can deliver products to our customers. This can involve training and coaching people and helping them implement new tools (automation) or changing their current processes to identify and get rid of waste and manual activities. I love trying new things and seeing the results you get from improving. I also love the freedom I get to plan and choose what focus areas we should look at each quarter (rather than someone telling me what to do)When I joined HSBC 21 years ago I was on a graduate scheme on a basic salary of £16,000. My current role pays around £70,000-£100,000. "

"I have worked for HSBC all my life but that is because it is such a large Global organisation with some many opportunities for continuous learning and development, that I have been able to move to do different roles in different departments and locations many times. As soon as I feel I am getting a bit bored or am in my comfort zone, I know it's time to look for a change (usually every 2-3 years). That could be a promotion or a side ways move to a new project or opportunity. Having a strong motivated line manager is one of my key requisites as I am inspired by reward and recognition for doing a good job (praise, thanks and decent performance reviews and bonuses). "

"In my spare time I have two key passions - cooking (experimentally) - I get the 'gist' from a recipe and then add my own twists, which can sometimes be very successful and sometimes not. And reading: psychological thrillers outside of work, and in work whatever the latest industry trends are relating to my role. I like to be very knowledgeable in my roles, so am constantly reading the latest books, blogging to share my learning with others, and watching you tube related videos.I am also happily married, with a 16 year old son, a cat called Charlie, and my husband has his own small business (a sports bar) which keeps him very busy."

"I prefer to work from home most of the time so my typical day would be logging onto my laptop about 8 or 9am depending what meetings I have. I then spend most of my day answering emails, instant messages for help with something, attending meetings, delivering coaching/training to team, reporting and communicating on progress/successes to higher management, or organising events such as charity or diversity and inclusion awareness sessions. I am a very big advocate of creating an Inclusive culture where everyone can thrive equally and spend quite a lot of my time in and out of work on this."

"I have two degrees: a First Class degree in Business Administration from Huddersfield University. I had already met my now husband at 17 years old so I didnt want to move away to University so I quickly learned to drive and drove myself there and back each day, and got a number of local part time jobs to pay the bills at the same time. Once I successfully applied for the HSBC graduate scheme we were encouraged to do a qualification specific to Finance if we hadn't already so I took the opportunity to get a second degree in Financial Services. This was tougher than I thought as I was working full time in the call centre on the graduate scheme as well by now. It took me 6 years of distanced learning (studying at home after work/at weekends) and I sat my final exam whilst 8 months pregnant with my son (the look of horror on the examiners face ; ) I love to continuously learn and have gained many qualifications relevant to my role since, e.g. I am a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (process improvement methodology), a SAFe certified consultant (scaling ways of working across teams), a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner (Agile ways of working methodologies), a DevOps SRE (automation tools), a Project Management Professional etc. Remember: everything is learnable. No one was born able to write code or do a good presentation for example."