Five questions with a Bain partner on finding balance and breaking barriers
Five questions with a Bain partner on finding balance and breaking barriers
Lindsey Naylor, a partner based in our London office, shares her powerful story of balancing career success with family life. In this Q&A, she reflects on her journey from a working-class community in South Yorkshire to Cambridge, bringing unique perspectives and gratitude to her role at Bain.
1. Can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?
I joined Bain as a partner last year and work in the Financial Services practice. Prior to Bain, I was at another consulting firm for 16 years, the last eight of which were as a partner. All my career has been spent working in capital markets and investment banking.
2. What is something people don't usually know about you?
I know that to my teams, the way I approach my work can appear like I’m “always on.” Early morning messages, evening calls, or late nights in the office are all relatively common for me. However, what those teams don’t always see is what happens in between.
I prefer to start my workday early so I can have breakfast with my kids slightly later in the morning and do the school run. I’ll often arrange calls to suit our US-based team, but keep time aside for the kids’ dinner and bedtime routine. My midweek late nights in the office are when I blast through my to-do list so I can wrap up early on Friday and spend the afternoon with my family. In truth, I feel my life is very balanced and I have much more flexibility than my peers who left consulting for industry.
3. What's a common assumption about you that isn't true?
For most of my life, I’ve been in a male dominated environment: Economics at Cambridge, consulting in financial services and often working on trading floors in the early days of my career. In that context, people have often assumed that my main point of diversity is my gender.
I don’t think that assumption is correct. While I bring a female perspective, my most distinctive insights come from my background. Growing up in Barnsley, South Yorkshire in a working-class household and attending a very poor, underperforming state school gave me a perspective that shapes how I approach challenges, collaborate with teams, and serve clients.
I think it’s important to recognize that we all bring a unique, multifaceted perspective, and it’s important not to assume that you know what that is based on an individual’s visible traits.
4. What's something about your life that people might find surprising?
I almost took a very different path in life. Coming from my upbringing and school environment, I was very unsavvy at age 15/16 about the professional world and how to pursue any type of professional career. To give you a sense of the quality of advice I received, I was told to take a multiple-choice test, and that test suggested that my best career choice was to become a fishmonger!
My school wasn’t academic, and going on to do A-levels wasn’t an obvious choice. While I decided that fish mongering may not be for me, I had very little idea of what the right path might be and how I might pursue it. I very seriously considered a cooking course, or art course rather than doing A-levels.
Luckily for me, I met an inspiring tutor at the local 6th-form college and committed to the A-level path. From there I was selected to be a summer school student by Sutton Trust, a charity focused on inspiring children from underprivileged backgrounds to top UK universities. I was accepted into the Cambridge summer school which completely opened my eyes to a whole new world of opportunity, and the rest is history.
I applied and was accepted to study Economics there, and I also participated in a year of exchange at MIT. From there, I studied a course at Harvard given the MIT/ Harvard collaboration. From nearly ending my academic journey at 16, five years later I graduated with an Economics degree that included courses from three of the world’s top universities. This series of events makes me feel incredibly grateful for everything I have today as things could have turned out very differently for me.
5. What’s something that you're proud of that people might not know about?
I am incredibly proud to have become a Partner at Bain. After 16 years at my old firm, the easy and less risky thing to do would have been to stay put and finish my career there. But during my second maternity leave, I thought hard about what gave me energy, what I had learned in the last 12 months, and what my next career move might be. I realized that I was excited by learning new things, meeting new people, and even after 16 years in consulting, I felt I still had a lot to learn.
When I met the Bain partners, I was hugely impressed by their experience, intellect, passion for what they do, but also humbleness and openness. So, I took the leap, have learned an awful lot in the past three years, and have been completely re-energized by my career. I am so happy I took the risk, and so proud to call myself a Bainie!
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