From Graduate to Australasian Chairman
A surprising number of our most senior leaders all started as graduates and usually give similar reasons for why the appeal of Unilever continues to motivate and keep them here. Even those that choose to leave are always complimentary about the training and development Unilever gave them and many return after acquiring external experience. So what could your future hold?
This is Peter's story:
Peter was the Chairman of Unilever Australasia from 2003 until May 2008. He still works for Unilever, but is now in a global role.
"I graduated from Imperial College London with a degree in Physics in 1981 and wanted to start a career in industry that was going to challenge me and develop me as a leader. I remember attending an introduction to management course run by Unilever at Oxford and getting to work with other undergraduates on solving real business problems. After 3 years of theory it was fantastic to see the opportunity of working in a leading global company with some great people on business challenges. Challenges that would test me not just intellectually but also as person. So I was sold on a career in management, applied to Unilever to be a technical trainee and the rest they say is history!
After 2 years on the training scheme I spent my first 5 years as a manager in various manufacturing roles in frozen foods and ice cream in the UK, the last 2 years as Commissioning and then Operations Manager for the largest ice cream factory that Unilever had ever built. Just when I was on top of the job I moved to marketing to become the Brand Manager for our take-home ice creams. In late 1989 a phone call from the HR Director asked if I would be interested in transferring to Australia as Technical Director of Streets Ice Cream. I remember thinking, “How am I going to discuss this with my wife?” who was then 6 months pregnant and very happy and successful in a senior HR role with Glaxo! But the opportunity to have an international career (live in Australia) - and for my wife to have a career break - gave us all the motivation to pack up home and fly south.
In 1996 after 3 challenging but very rewarding years at Streets as Technical Director I was offered my first general management role as Managing Director of our Foods business in Japan. This time, with a 2 year-old son and 3 month old daughter, we packed our bags again and moved to Tokyo with different business and personal challenges to when we arrived here. We spent 4 marvelous years not learning the language, but working hard and playing hard, and having experiences of living in a culture so very different from that we were accustomed to.
The next career move came at a time when we had signaled to Unilever that we needed some years back in the UK to get our children into the education system. It was a career move that proved to be one of the most rewarding periods of my life. I was appointed Chairman of Unilever’s worldwide agribusiness with plantations in Thailand, Malaysia, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana, tea plantations in India, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi and plant breeding and biotech research in Europe, all of which was based at a head office in Cambridge. The challenge was to divest of those parts, which did not fit into the transformation of Unilever into a focussed consumer business. Whilst pursuing this strategy I was able to spend considerable time and effort ensuring that in the environments we worked in where we employed nearly 160,000 people, we made a real impact in provision of clean water, improving housing, education and healthcare. Many of our plantations owned and managed the housing, schools and hospitals.
After completing the divestments which left Unilever focused on tea plantations in India and East Africa I was offered the role of Global Head of Information Technology for Unilever based in the Corporate office in London. A role that I undertook for 4 years and which went through the boom bust cycle of the .Com era and the millennium bug. For me though the most important part was ensuring the development of information systems, which would support the transformation of Unilever into more of a regional and global business.
However, I was anxious to be back at the front line and was given the opportunity to return to Australia at the end of 2003 to build our business in Australia and New Zealand, this time with a 14 and 12 year old and all the experience I had acquired since leaving in 1996.
My wife Sue and I are delighted to be back. On reflection, I am amazed at the opportunities that have flowed from the career Unilever has offered me, a career which has provided amazing challenges, opportunities to constantly learn and work with people whose values are very similar to mine. We put our people first and act with integrity even when the difficult decisions get taken. And I remain excited about where we are heading.”
Peter Slator, 2005.
