Setting the tone

Ros Marshall joined childcare operator Bright Horizons as UK managing director this year. She tells Simone Rensch how music influenced her leadership style, and why a bout of chickenpox caused her to shift career paths

In Movers & Shakers, a quarterly series, EducationInvestor Global sits down with the most prominent women working across the wide world of education to talk about the dynamics shaping their industries and roles

Running a company is a bit like conducting an orchestra. You have to unify all of the performers, set the tempo, listen and shape the sound of the whole ensemble. You expect every musician to practise relentlessly and put in the hours. When it’s show time, you can only hope they are devoted to their performance, and to you. As the conductor, you must be confident that the orchestra will follow your lead.

Leaders set the tone of an organisation and expect their team to follow their lead – and some do this better than others. For Ros Marshall, who heads up the UK operations of early years provider Bright Horizons, musical training has directly influenced her leadership style. Perseverance and creativity, fuelled by years of devoted training in her childhood and teenage years, are engrained into her management approach.

It’s a cold February morning when we meet at a central London hotel, where quiet lobby music plays as we chat. Marshall is just six weeks into her new role as UK managing director of Bright Horizons. She is a well-known face in the sector, having held senior roles at international schools chain Nord Anglia, nursery operator kidsunlimited, and UAEbased international schools group Taaleem. Now, she leads the UK’s second-largest nursery group.

Marshall’s route into the education sector was unorthodox. “In school, I thought my purpose was to become a concert pianist,” she recalls. With aspirations to study at the Royal Academy of Music, a young Marshall was rehearsing religiously for auditions. But something got in the way: a bout of chickenpox. “In those days, you had to wait a full year to audition again, which, at the age of 17, seemed like a lifetime.”

So, she reluctantly changed tack. But the musical training engrained creativity and high standards into the young woman, which, she says, has helped her rise to the top throughout her career. In fact, her leadership style was influenced by her piano teacher: “She had the ability to inspire and motivate you to want to do things well and achieve for yourself. That’s probably the most important trait that I use in my day-to-day leadership.” Building a repertoire After ridding herself of chickenpox, 17-year-old Marshall attended Guildford College to pursue a management diploma in institutional housekeeping and catering. Her reasoning: “I can always get a job feeding people if I can’t get a job entertaining people with music.”

For 25 years, Marshall worked in various management roles, including at contract catering company Sodexo, where she became head of its education division, which catered to schools and education facilities in the UK. “Being in that space and seeing what was happening in the business of education was really exciting to me,” she explains. After hitting a glass ceiling, Marshall transferred into education when she was hired as the managing director of the learning services division at Nord Anglia. ▶

In school, I thought my purpose was to become a concert pianist

Marshall became chief operations officer of the international school provider, overseeing international schools, its nursery businesses (which was later sold) and learning services. When the company was pulled from the London stock exchange in 2008 take-private deal, Marshall parted ways with the group.

After a short career break – during which she supported charitable causes and returned to her musical roots by supporting the National Children’s Orchestras of Great Britain, of which she became a trustee – Marshall was in 2010 approached for the chief executive role of thennursery group kidsunlimited, which at the time had 45 UK sites. “It needed some strong operational management,” Marshall recalls. She turned the businesses around within three-and-a-half years; investors got their money back – and more. In 2013, kidsunlimited, which by then had 65 sites, was acquired by Bright Horizons. Marshall calls this the highlight of her career. “I think that was a defining moment for us to actually take it across the line. Many businesses don’t make it and we passed our due diligence tests and I felt secure in what we were passing on – we didn’t have any skeletons in the closet, no nasty shocks or surprises. It was a company that we were proud to integrate with Bright Horizons.”

Shortly after the sale, a recruiter called up Marshall and asked if she fancied running schools in Dubai. The decision to move was an easy one – her three daughters, who are now 28, 27 and 25, had left home and “it was time for mum and dad to leave home for a bit as well,” she laughs. Shifting key Originally on a three-year contract as chief executive of Taaleem, Marshall and her husband took the leap and moved to Dubai. (The first thing they bought – before even a bed – was a piano.) Taaleem had nine schools when Marshall joined in 2013 and 14 when she left (the fifteenth, which Marshall laid the foundations for, is opening in Abu Dhabi in September, she says.) During her five-year tenure, enrolments grew from just over 8,000 to 12,000.

Marshall sought to unite the organisation through its culture. “I’ve always said people work for people. How you treat people and how you expect to be treated are connected to each other,” she explains. “You have to make sure that the values are embedded fully throughout the organisation… and I think this did empower people with accountability and encouraged creativity, as the staff were regularly coming up with new ideas.”

But it wasn’t all upbeat. At times, Marshall found it hard working with Taaleem’s board comprising nine men from the region, all with different cultural backgrounds and expectations. Then, there were the firm’s 102 shareholders to manage. It wasn’t a question of sexism or ageism (Marshall is 60), but mainly a matter of cultural differences. In the region, direct decision-making is not general practice, Marshall explains. “Many business leaders don’t like saying ‘no’ to your face and there’s a lot of consultation around every decision. I found the shareholders and local businessmen to be consultative by nature. They’ll always ask for your advice or opinion, but then go off and make their own decision.”

Sometimes, there were conflicts. “I recall one conversation with a board member who thought I was stubborn; I thought I was principled. When I asked him how he wanted me to change – he said he didn’t. When you work in education, integrity is paramount and I wouldn’t deviate from that. As a chief executive, you’re not there to make friends. You’re there to run the business and do what’s best for the students, their families and the shareholders.”

There was some speculation in the market as to why Marshall left Taaleem and Dubai last year. When pressed on her reasoning, she says: “My contract was three plus two years, but I stayed for six years. I never had an appraisal while I was there, despite asking for it. In November 2018, when I completed five years there, I asked the board about the contract extension. Eventually, I received a response in May 2019 and they informed me they had found someone else to take over from September 2019,” she says. “It could have been handled better in my view.” It’s who you know… Coincidentally, Bright Horizons chief executive Stephen Kramer, based in the US where the business is headquartered, contacted Marshall the same week she agreed to the completion of her contract, to ask if she was ready to come back to the UK. As it happened, she was.

Marshall re-joined the Bright Horizon family in January. “People often say ‘never go back’, but I’m not actually going back,” she stresses. “I’m going forward in my view, because Bright Horizons UK is a bigger organisation and is continuing to grow in the UK, where it has established itself as a major player.”

The move has kept her busy. “Bright Horizons is large and complex, and there’s a lot to focus on.” The provider’s UK operation, whose more than 300 nurseries employs 10,000 staff, makes up about 25% of the overall business, which recently reported $2.06 billion in annual revenue, up from $1.9 billion in 2018. ▶ When you work in education, integrity is paramount and I wouldn’t deviate from that

In the US, the company has been included in the Bloomberg 2020 Gender Equality Index for the first time this year, and is in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation 2020’s Corporate Equality Index for the 16th consecutive year. Over half of its board is female. “Diversity requires a balanced approach to decision-making,” says Marshall. “It’s always about finding the best talent. In the past, because women have usually been the ones to take advantage of flexible working and career breaks, circumstance can dictate where they end up in terms of promotion. However, we have consciously been looking at the opportunities for women and we practise what we preach.” Still, a significant gender pay gap remains at Bright Horizons, whose female staff’s mean hourly wage is 23.4% lower than their male counterparts’. In response to this, Marshall says one must look beyond the statistics and consider flexible working (women make up to 89% of part-time workers at the organisation) and other factors that can influence diversity statistics.

Stiff competition In the UK, whispers in the market suggest that Bright Horizons has over the past year lost ground to more nimble private equity-backed nursery providers, which continue to gobble up single-site and cluster assets across targeted regions, helping them quickly gain ground in a race to scale. Marshall stresses that Bright Horizons hasn’t “been sleeping on the job – we’ve just been looking at where we can add value to help more working parents.

“Our approach hasn’t changed; I think it’s just a question of what has come to market and what has fitted our criteria.” Bright Horizons also provides work and family solutions for corporate clients. “We see ourselves as much more than just a nursery provider,” she says, “providing solutions and support to families, offering emergency childcare places in our nurseries or in the family home, as well as elderly care services and professional advice and guidance.”

In a testament to Bright Horizons’ commitment to the UK market, Marshall is currently living out of a suitcase, travelling the country and visiting nurseries. “I want to see for myself what the challenges are, hear about the issues they are facing and determine how we can best help and support them,” she says.

Her cherished piano, which was shipped back from Dubai, has found a permanent residence, however, joining a sprawling collection whose members you need more than one hand to count. “They are a bit like children – all lovely in their own way – so I can’t get rid of any of them.”

Much as leaders are like conductors, nursery practitioners and teachers at the educational coalface must be devoted to their craft, like musicians. Marshall has huge empathy with educators, even though she, admittedly, is not a natural teacher. “You have to be full-on the whole time you are with the children, because they deserve that attention. So, it’s our job to make sure they have time-out to recharge.

“It’s similar to being a music performer – you have to practise thoroughly and when you go on stage to perform you have to be fully devoted and focused on your performance.” n