Ruth Handcock - Octopus Investments: What skills CEOs hire for and how to be an accessible leader

Today's guest is Ruth Handcock, CEO of Octopus Investments. 

Ruth has had a really interesting career. She's gone from working on checkouts and factories during the nightshift to being the CEO of one of the UK's biggest financial service firms. It's an incredible journey and one we're excited to share with you.

Investing can often seem an opaque world but Ruth talks us through what Octopus Investments does and dismantles the long-held beliefs about what you need to start investing.  

Ruth is also the Chair of Octopus MoneyCoach.  The British tendency not to talk about money means we are often shy when it's going well but are especially tight-lipped when things go wrong. In this episode, we delve more into the role MoneyCoach plays in reducing people's money worries and why it's so crucial for employers to offer this type of service. 

In this episode with Ruth we discuss:

• Her experience as Global finance director of Bacardi , specifically martini whiskey and cognac.
• Ruth's wide variety of jobs including checkout operative, salad chopper on a nightshift and car washer- what did those jobs teach her about being CEO of an investment firm? 
• What do CEOs look for when hiring?
• Learnings from her own entrepreneurial failure 
• What attracted her to join Octopus?
• What does Octopus Investments do? 
• How much money do you need to invest? 
• The difference between Octopus Ventures and Investments.
• What is the role of a Chief Executive? 
• How the pandemic was an opportunity to do that better.
• Setting boundaries in the world of work.
• What more can we do to inspire women at the top of financial services? 
• What the government can do to help this?
• How easy has she found it to achieve work-life balance? 
• How did she find what she was passionate about? 
• What is Octopus Moneycoach and what does it do?
• Where are there opportunities to improve education post-pandemic? 
• If Ruth was 22 in 2022, what sectors would she like to work in? 
• What sources of information does she consume? 
• What her cocktail of choice is? 

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