Interview with Fiona Davidge

Published on Mon, 27/02/2017 - 20:04

Airmic’s newest board member talks to Jessica Titherington about managing reputation, her time in the RAF, and the importance of getting risk management into the business psyche.

Reputational risk has become something of a buzzword in recent years and has rocketed up the risk registers of most companies. But for Fiona Davidge, enterprise risk manager at The Wellcome Trust – one of the world's largest medical research charities funding research into human and animal health – managing reputation is nothing new.  “We deal with funding  in medical research which can be highly sensitive for many reasons. In our business, ethics are so important.”

She explains that the charity has to manage many of the same risks facing all modern companies – globalisation, the internet, overseas travel – but that reputational risk is one their biggest challenges. “We always make sure we look at the decisions we are taking from a non-financial perspective and I also work closely with our communications department. We need absolute clarity on what the message is.”

The charity has been proactive in taking practical steps to manage reputational risk, including expanding its in-house press office and supporting a wider initiative among scientific organisations in the UK called the Science Media Centre. Both moves give the media, who often play a crucial role building reputation, easy and fast access to scientific experts. “We realised scientists are often not available or unwilling to speak to the press, which can lead to misleading media coverage of issues we care about. This initiative helps journalists improve their reporting by giving them access to experts that are closest to the evidence.”

According to Fiona, reputation is even more important today than in the past, but it is now harder to manage. “Factors that can impact reputation have become far more instant. Today, an individual can generate a whole negative campaign, whereas in the past the media and business world had much more control over the agenda.”

Davidge has had a diverse and colourful career. “Every time I’ve moved job,” she explains, “I’ve tried to take on something new.”  She began working life as a nurse, first in the NHS and then as a qualified officer in the RAF. This saw her travel around the world to places such as the Falkland Islands and the Ascension Islands, and gave her the chance to meet a diverse range of people and jobs.

“My nursing career gave me invaluable life experience, but intellectually, I realised it wasn’t what I wanted to do,” she says. After having children, she studied for a law degree before landing her first job in the corporate world as a business resilience specialist for Thames Water.

“The job taught me so much. I learnt about planning, crisis management, how a business works, external liaison. I had to be assertive but diplomatic, especially being a woman in what was still a man’s world, but I had learnt that skill while in the forces.”

Davidge is one of the newest members of the Airmic board, taking up her position in October last year. She is keen to encourage the association to push its risk management agenda even further. “I only joined Airmic once I had insurance in my role because I perceived that it wouldn’t have much to offer pure risk managers. Actually that’s not the case at all and the ERM Forum (Airmic’s conference dedicated to enterprise risk management) was one of the best I’ve been to, so we really need to develop that further.”

She would also like to see greater support for professionals who don’t specialise in risk and insurance but have it within their job remit. “It’s easy to forget that the bulk of companies do not have specialists in insurance. What support are we giving them? How do we make sure they are not at the mercy of their brokers?

“Similarly, we need to get risk onto business courses – not necessarily for people who will go on to become risk managers, but so that all business people have risk management in their psyche. CROs are a rare beast outside of financial services and we have to remember that.”

Fiona Davidge - Career highlights

2012-present
The Wellcome Trust – enterprise risk manager

2007-2012
Transport for London/London Underground – senior corporate risk manager

1998-2007
Thames Water / RWE – various roles including business resilience and security manager

1979-1995
Various healthcare roles, including an officer in the Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service 1984 - 1988