Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Founder of Snoop and former CEO of Virgin Money

Tough At The Top

Dame Jayne-Anne is the Founder and Executive Chair of Snoop. From 2007 to 2018 she was the CEO of Virgin Money. She was one of the original founders of Virgin Direct in 1995 and, three years later, she set up the Virgin One account, which was then acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. She subsequently spent five years at RBS before returning to Virgin as CEO of Virgin Money until its acquisition by CYBG in 2018. As such, she is one of very few people to have been recruited by both Richard Branson and Fred Goodwin (!) and has experienced the full range of corporate life from entrepreneurial start-up to listed PLC.

If I had to think of one word to describe Jayne-Anne, it would be “purposeful”. She has always believed that business should be a force for good (she calls her guiding philosophy “Everyone Better Off”) and has been happy to challenge established thinking and ask the apparently stupid questions that everyone else wants answered but was too scared to ask. This has led to some pigeon-holing her as “difficult”, but “brave” would be an equally valid description and it has been essential to her success.

She is very honest about some of the challenges she has faced along the way, from battling against engrained prejudices in the banking world, her struggle to have a baby and the purpose it gave her work when she eventually did, and some mistakes made since leaving Virgin Money three years ago. But she is also a wonderful story-teller and we also talk about her experiences in the banking crisis trying to buy Northern Rock from the government, how Virgin ended up sponsoring the London Marathon and indeed her own love of running and the role it plays in balancing her mental health.