Silence: Sara Weller wants senior people to talk about their disabilities
Sara Weller was a golden girl with a golden life. Her brilliant career as a retail executive was complemented by a picture-perfect family, with a supportive husband and two children.
And then it all unravelled.
Weller, now 63, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Having jetted around the world for her job – at one point she took day trips to India – she is now in a wheelchair.
Even more devastating than the collapse in her health was the end of her marriage in a painful divorce.
Far from being crushed, however, Weller has emerged stronger. She is using her unique platform as one of the UK’s leading business people and a woman with MS to help end disability discrimination in the workplace.
Before she discovered she had MS in 2009, she had enjoyed an almost seamless ascent to the top, coupled with what looked like an idyllic domestic life.
At her peak, she was managing director of Argos, and arguably the most powerful woman in UK retail. In a previous job at Sainsbury’s, she narrowly missed out on becoming the chief executive.
MS did not derail her working life for long. She may no longer be the golden girl, but she has earned a far greater accolade: the bravest woman in corporate Britain.
Weller is now an independent director at telecoms giant BT and Virgin Money. She is also determined to use her clout to speak out for people with disabilities.
‘There are probably around 1,000 directors on FTSE 100 boards and I am the only one sharing the fact I have a disability,’ she says.
‘If that was the number for gender or race, there would be riots. But the fact there is only one person with a declared disability? Nobody bats an eyelid.’
Should there be a target for disabled directors as there is for women? ‘It is very complex. Many disabilities are not visible and senior people don’t want to talk about it, which creates a conspiracy of silence. People are afraid it will be perceived as a weakness. But if senior people do not talk about their disabilities, then it is a conspiracy of silence.’
Her next project is an inaugural day of action in February to help end disability exclusion. This will help businesses do better at including disabled people. ‘Some of the most hard-nosed business people have been the most incredibly supportive of me,’ she says.
‘I would like senior people to share their experience of disabilities. I would like to see transparent reporting. The focus should be on line managers. They are the difference between people feeling included and feeling excluded.’
Unsparingly honest about her emotions, she says she feels her disability is ‘a failure and a flaw. Even though logically I know it is not the case, I still feel a lesser person.’ No-one else would remotely agree. Her latest achievement is to have completed the London Marathon in her wheelchair, raising a quarter of a million pounds for the MS Society.
Most people would be exhausted just navigating her daily life – there are issues entering buildings, crossing roads and going to the loo – let alone being a director of a blue-chip company as well.
She is understandably ambivalent about her condition. At the same time as perceiving it as a flaw, she also acknowledges it as a superpower, that has enabled her to make a far bigger impact.
‘Without it, I would have just been a director like lots of others. But because of the combination of my career and my MS, I can do things nobody else can,’ she says.
Even before her diagnosis, as a woman from a modest family background, Weller had defied the odds to reach the top in corporate Britain, which at the start of her career was still dominated by privately-schooled men.
Brought up in Weymouth, Dorset, she went to the local grammar school and won a place at New College Oxford to read chemistry. ‘I struggled a lot socially and a bit academically too,’ she says. She excelled despite her self-doubt, gaining a first-class degree and a research prize as well as playing badminton for the university.
Weller learned to be resilient at an early age. Her father died when she was just 14. She and her elder sister, Fiona, had to be self-reliant because their mother, now 96, was busy caring for their dad. ‘Overwhelmingly, that was a good thing. The marginal downside is I am reluctant to ask for help.’
‘My mum was not a rabid feminist, but she definitely believed that women could do things. She has always been behind me, and that is the most powerful thing.
I try to do that with my children.’
Her first job was at Mars, which at the time was an incubator for future chief executives. Her contemporaries included Allan Leighton, who became boss of Asda, and Richard Baker, a former chief at Boots.
Having worked on filled chocolate bars, including Bounty, Twix and Snickers, she left when it became too hard to juggle the job with her two children, Sophie and Adam, now both adults.
Her later roles included a senior position at Sainsbury’s, where she was pipped for the top job by Justin King in 2004. ‘Justin started the same day as me at Mars, so you can imagine how that felt,’ she says.
Does she regret never having been a FTSE 100 chief executive? She doesn’t answer directly, but says she was approached by grocer Morrisons in 2008 and ‘concluded I didn’t want to do it.’
It was around that time, in her late forties, that she discovered she had MS. ‘I was always somebody who planned for tomorrow, because my parents were always preparing for the day my dad died. With my diagnosis, my mindset changed to live for today, because I don’t know what I will be able to do tomorrow.’
More was to come as her marriage unravelled. Her divorce in 2014 was ‘painful on a level way beyond anything else. It was much worse than my diagnosis.’
‘I learned I had MS in a world where I had a supportive family and a career. Suddenly, the support system fell away.
‘It took away the whole underpinning of my story. My narrative had to be rewritten. I have never wanted another partner, for two reasons: one is that I failed the first time, even though I thought I made a good choice, so why would I think I wouldn’t fail again?
‘And I think, why would anybody want to link up with someone who has a terminal condition? To protect myself from a sense of rejection, it is easier to say I don’t want a partner. No-one that I would want would want me.’
Her life is busy and fulfilled with her children, wider family, her friends and her work. ‘A partner would have to fit into a little corner of my world, which is not fair. There are odd occasions when I feel a bit bereft, if I’m at an event and everyone else has a partner, but I have chosen this way.’
Inevitably, she says, there have been ‘days when I would just want to sit in a corner and dissolve into tears’. ‘But work has always been my safety blanket and a reason to keep going. It has become my raison d’etre. I can contribute more now.’
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