A senior official from HM Revenue and Customs yesterday won an award for impactful leadership and cross-sector collaboration.
Toni Clark, head of customer journeys at the tax agency, was announced as the winner of the 2018 Leadership Impact Award by Whitehall & Industry Group (WIG), a charity that aims to foster constructive collaboration between government, industry and the not-for-profit sector.
At an awards ceremony hosted by WIG yesterday, Clark was commended for her resilience, the repertoire of change management tools she uses and the way she draws on expertise from a wide range of sectors in her role developing a “more responsive” customer journey function at HMRC.
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Interviewed before the announcement on what winning the award would mean for her, Clark said: “I think the difference it would make is that endorsement of the development journey that I’ve come on.”
She added that the tools and techniques she learned on a WIG leadership programme had helped her become “a more confident leader”, able to “deal with the challenges of being in a new team, a new environment”.
Among the finalists was Michelle Cupples, deputy director communications for the Chief Operating Office at the Cabinet Office, while Natasha Munro, global news executive at British Airways, won an award in the category “emerging leader”.
Past participants of one of WIG’s five leadership schemes can be nominated for the awards, which Peter Unwin, WIG chief executive, said “capture the incredible impact our alumni” can have on their organisations and beyond.
“Exposure to sectors other than your own is increasingly necessary for a successful career, yet the opportunity to broaden perspectives and skills through cross-sector learning remains all too rare,” he added.
“Our charitable purpose is to promote understanding and learning between the sectors, and our unique and highly regarded leadership programmes make a big contribution to this.”
Judges included Unwin and Department for Work and Pensions director general of HR Debbie Alder. They were looking for evidence of the benefits of learning in a cross-sector environment and the measurable impact this had on the entrant, their team and organisation.
The award was first launched last year, when the winners were Carol Tullo, director of information policy and services at The National Archives, and Daniel Hurst, a strategy analyst at aerospace company BAE Systems.