Anicca Digital
Debunking stereotypes A
nn Stanley is celebrating the 15th anniversary of Anicca Digital, the company she founded in 2007, as well as her 20th anniversary of working in digital marketing. The CEO has worked hard to get where she is, always following her guiding principle – prove yourself! “I’ve always been a tomboy,” she tells us, after we asked her about the photo of her on her motorbike that adorns her bio at anicca.co.uk. “I’ve always been into rock music and motorbikes – though I’m a bit older now, so I’m more about fast cars these days.” Unimpressed by the options typically expected of the girls at her school (“you could either work in a shop or the local bra factory”), she broke the mould and became one of the first girls from her comprehensive school to go to university – studying biology here in Leicester. ANN STANLEY
After working in male-dominated industries for years, she’d always treated everyone equally but had never managed to get the director title she felt her talents deserved. “At 35, I was working in the leather industry, and frustrated that I wasn’t progressing in the way I felt I should be. I was doing all the work, but in order to advance up the company, you had to wait for an existing director to retire or die!” That wasn’t looking likely to happen any time soon, so Ann made a sideways move, changing industry from science to marketing, and finally smashing through the glass ceiling when she founded her own business. Ann doesn’t believe gender quotas are the right approach to building your team; instead, create an environment where everyone can thrive. “We’ve always picked the best person for the job and have still ended up with an equal gender balance. If you’re doing everything you can to prove that you’re as good, if not better than everyone else, and you’re still not progressing, that’s not the environment for you. Very talented women are running their own businesses; I always think: ‘If I can’t change the culture; then I’ll do it myself’. “Trust in yourself; if you know you’ve got the talent – prove it!” And she certainly has – now celebrating a decade and a half with Anicca Digital, Ann is proud that the business has evolved to the point where she no longer needs to do everything. “Before the pandemic, I was able 84 | NICHE
Trust in yourself; if you know you’ve got the talent – prove it! to take a month off to travel the world, and things ran smoothly without me – if you hire the right people, and trust them to do their jobs, you can build a legacy for the future. Businesses aren’t worth anything if they’re reliant on their founder.” Currently, she’s helping others prove they have the talent it takes to succeed in business by doing her bit to close the digital skills gap among the female population. Anicca provides a grant-funded 12-week digital skills bootcamp, which starts in April, for which over 70% of the enrolled applicants are women. Anicca is recruiting for the April course, people can apply online at anicca.co.uk/grant-funded-digital-skills-bootcamps.
