Accountant shares her interest in fair trade

Feb 11 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

Accountant Patricia Alexander tells Karen Dent how the death of a work colleague changed her outlook on life – and led to a new career as managing director with financial co-operative Shared Interest

Lucky is a word Patricia Alexander uses a lot to describe the trajectory of her life. From working as the managing director of a multi-national manufacturing company to her present role heading up the fair trade finance organisation Shared Interest, she believes she has found her niche because “I’ve been in the right place at the right time”. And she has rarely had to move away from the North East to find her lucky breaks.

Alexander, 50, is a native of Newcastle. “I like the North East, I’m very much a North East sort of person. It’s where my friends and family are – and my rugby team too,” she said.

A Newcastle Falcons season ticket holder, she’s frequently found at Kingston Park at the weekend.

“And I don’t just go to look at men’s thighs like a lot of women do,” she laughs, “I’d been going long before they were in the premier league and Rob Andrew came along.”

Now living in West Boldon on South Tyneside with her two cats – “I’m very much a cat person” -– Alexander attended Newcastle University to qualify as an accountant, and recently achieved an MBA from Durham Business School. She has spent much of her career working for manufacturing companies, latterly as the managing director and company secretary of Saint-Gobain Quartz, which makes and exports goods for the semiconductor market.

“I hadn’t really thought where I was going,” she said, “I guess my career has kind of evolved. I’ve been lucky –- I’ve been in the right place at the right time.

“Then a couple of things happened: the guy I worked with dropped down dead of a heart attack at the age of 52. I started to take stock of what I wanted. Where am I going? What do I want? Do I really want to be doing this in five years’ time?”

The answer was no and Alexander started to search for an alternative. A committed Catholic, who sits on her local parish council and the area pastoral council, she initially ran Minsteracres Retreat near Consett before spotting the advert for Shared Interest.

Based in the centre of Newcastle, with branches in Costa Rica and Kenya – and a third international office due to open in Lima in Peru this year – the co-operative organisation makes loans to fair trade farmers and artisans, via investments made by supporters in the UK. Alexander, who has been the managing director since 2006, uses the example of a Christian Aid worker’s visit to a group of women making embroidered items in Bangladesh, to explain what Shared Interest is all about.

The charity had wanted to take a photo of the woman embroidering – but she ran off. “There was only one needle between five ladies in the village,” says Alexander, “and she dashed off to find who had it. We would provide the finance so all the ladies in the village have needles.”

Set up in 1990 as an offshoot from the Newcastle-based Traidcraft organisation, Shared Interest - –which has £22m invested in 41 countries – is Alexander’s “ideal job”. The city centre open-plan office, which employs 25 people – including two staff from Venezuela, one from Ecuador and one from Germany – has clocks on the wall showing the time in Kenya, Costa Rica and the UK. A world map is stuck with pins depicting “ambassador locations” and shelves display Fairtrade foods and handicrafts that Shared Interest loans have helped people to produce.

“Like many people, I had probably never heard of Shared Interest before I joined the organisation,” said Alexander. “It’s a fantastic organisation, the North East should be really proud of it, what it’s doing and the impact it’s having on these hundreds of thousands of people.”

The organisation, which has won a number of awards for the transparency of its accounts, is currently shortlisted in two categories in the North East Business Awards, which are run by The Journal and its sister paper, the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough.

Although her background is in the commercial world, Alexander has always been deeply involved with voluntary work that she hopes has made a difference to other people’s lives. In addition to offering her services as the treasurer of North Tyneside Carers’ Centre and working with St Cuthbert’s Care, she is a Soroptimist.

“Sorop means sister,” she said. “It’s an international women’s organisation that works for the betterment of women and children worldwide. It’s a bit like the WI but it’s a lot more fun!

“Potentially, it’s supposed to have someone from each profession – they have a doctor, a dentist, a teacher – and they were looking for an accountant.”

Alexander had been involved with Soroptimist International for two years before the opportunity to join Shared Interest came along.

She said: “When I got this job, I just felt that all of my personal values all came together with my social life and things that I was doing, so for me it was my ideal job.

“One of the magazines when I got the job said: ‘Who would think someone from a capitalist finance background would come into this ethical organisation,’ but I've always been involved. I’ve always worked with the church and I’ve been heavily involved in CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), so I’ve always done some work for that sector, but I hadn’t actually thought of working in it. But I guess I was just looking for something different, I was looking for something that really interested me and was really important to me.”

Although she is a Christian, Alexander is at pains to stress that Shared Interest is not aligned to the church, but works with people of any – or no – faith. But she is evangelical about the world she now works in.

“You can’t work in an organisation like this without being passionate about what we do,” she says. “It’s funny, when I first started, I’d watched Comic Relief, Children in Need, you see it on the news, and they said: ‘You’ve got to have a visit, you’ll feel completely different when you’ve visited these places, and I thought, ‘no I won’t’. But when it’s real and you can touch it, and it’s there in front of you, it just has such a dramatic impact on you. When you come back, you see all the excess that we have in this country – we’ve just got so much and these children have nothing.”

Alexander visited a number of projects that Shared Interest has invested in during September last year. She said: “I was there for a couple of weeks and met various producers, mainly making handicrafts, baskets, and jewellery.

“One of the organisations that I visited was called Undugu. They channel their profits into the slum area of Nairobi so I went out and visited a project in the middle of a slum area, where they’re running a school – literally just a tin shack – to teach the kids. The kids get fed there every day and that’s probably the only meal those kids will get. I didn’t sleep that night when I went back to the hotel, you just don’t realise how little these people have and the sorts of conditions they’re living in, and yet they are tremendously proud.”

This enthusiasm for her work and the difference she believes people in the UK – where about 30% of the world’s Fairtrade sales are made -– can make, is impacting on her personal life.

“You take it everywhere, you never stop talking about it,” she said. “I don’t think there would be anyone who knows me who doesn’t know exactly what I do.

“When I turned 50, my friends said because I was so passionate about this now, instead of buying me anything, they invested quite a bit of money in Water Aid to buy different things that could help other people.”

Fairtrade Fortnight starts on February 25 and Alexander applauds the work the Fairtrade Foundation has done pushing its agenda into the mainstream. She points to Sainsbury’s decision only to stock fair trade bananas and says that the Fairtrade premium – money that is forwarded to producers or artisans to invest in social or business development initiatives – paid to producers in the Windward Island has been used to set up nurseries.

“Now the older children can go to school instead of staying at home looking after their younger siblings, while their mothers go out to harvest their bananas,” she said.

“It’s getting in front of the public, it’s no longer on the bottom shelf in the supermarket. The Café Direct coffee is up there with all the other coffees – there’s so much more consumer choice. If it’s there and it’s available in the supermarkets then people will buy it.

“I buy Fairtrade. I always look for Fairtrade. I guess to a certain extent, I have the ability to do that and not everybody has. I wouldn’t criticise people for going to Primark and buying T- shirts for £5 for their kids if that’s all they can afford. Not everybody can afford to be select, but those that can, should be and should try to shop with a conscience.

“I'm not against consumerism. At the end of the day, what we’re doing is creating capitalists, so people can make money out of Fairtrade – and why shouldn’t they?”

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CV

2006 - present: Shared Interest Society, managing director

1989- 2005: Saint-Gobain Quartz plc, starting in finance and administration, and becoming managing director in 2001.

1974- 1988: Started as accounts assistant, progressing to works accountant in 1981 with Crompton Parkinson plc (Hawker Siddley Group) and then to financial controller with Marconi Radar Systems (GEC) in 1985.

1984: Newcastle University, Fellow of Chartered Certified Accountants

2005 : Durham Business School MBA

Appointments include:

IFAT Europe board member

Current member of the North East Industrial Development Board

Past member of the CBI Regional Council

Member of the Institute of Directors

Voluntary Work

Member of Soroptimist International

Treasurer North Tyneside Carers Centre

St Cuthberts Care – Financial systems

Interests:

Holidays in hot places

Eating out

Theatre

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THE QUESTIONNAIRE

What car do you drive?

Mercedes CLK but use public transport when possible.

What’s your favourite restaurant?

Romano’s in Cleadon Village and Cafe 21.

Who or what makes you laugh?

My management team colleagues.

What’s your favourite book?

Too many to choose one, I like crime and mystery novels.

What was the last album you bought?

No1 Classical Album 2008.

What’s your ideal job, other than the one you’ve got?

Manager of the England rugby team.

If you had a talking parrot, what’s the first thing you would teach it to say?

Its prayers with two cats in the house.

What’s your greatest fear?

Not making Shared Interest a success and increasing our social impact.

What’s the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

Have confidence and trust your own instincts.

And the worst?

It will sort itself out.

What’s your poison?

Dry white wine.

What newspapers do you read, other than The Journal?

The FT and sometimes the Independent.

How much was your first pay packet and what was it for?

£32 for a week summer temping job.

How do you keep fit?

I don’t do enough.

What’s your most irritating habit?

Being too impatient.

What’s your biggest extravagance?

Clothes.

Which historical or fictional character do you most identify with or admire?

Inspector Morse for his different way of thinking and always getting results.

Which four famous people would you most like to dine with?

George Alagiah, Patron of the Fairtrade Foundation, Martin Johnson, David Attenborough and Daniel Craig.

How would you like to be remembered?

As a good friend.