Women in Leadership Roles : Mia Drennan

**Nisha Joshi** (0:04)
This is The Delivery Space Podcast. Whether you're interested in software delivery, business change or transformation, we have some great content lined up for you.

**Mia Drennan** (0:15)
We're working on it because we do really want people to feel a sense of purpose when they come to the office. If you want to get out of bed in the morning, you want to go somewhere that's going to stretch you intellectually. It's going to be, hopefully, you're in a nice environment, working with people that you like and get on with them, that other people are happy to do whatever it is they're doing, and hopefully having fun in their job.

**Nisha Joshi** (0:38)
This week on The Delivery Space podcast, we had the most marvellous conversation with Mia Drennan, founder of GLAS, a global business spanning four continents and 350 people strong. And let me tell you, Mia's story is not one for forgetting. Mia took us on a journey from her beginnings in the city, leaving a six-figure salary no less, to build not one, but two successful brands. She spoke with such candid wisdom about turning rejection into redirection, and spoke about the grit it takes to build a business from scratch. What stayed with me was her unwavering belief in service, not just to clients, but to her team. Mia's story will inspire, challenge, and perhaps even nudge you towards your own next bold step. This is the kind of conversation that leaves you better for having heard it. How are you doing, Sharon? Are you ready for a stonking great episode today?

**Sharon Williams** (1:38)
I'm really good, and yes, I am. And we've got the lovely Mia with us. Welcome, Mia.

**Nisha Joshi** (1:44)
Hi.

**Sharon Williams** (1:44)
How are you?

**Nisha Joshi** (1:45)
Hi.

**Mia Drennan** (1:46)
Yeah, I'm good, thank you.

**Sharon Williams** (1:47)
Good.

**Mia Drennan** (1:48)
So my name is Mia Drennan. I am the founder of a company called GLAS, and we provide services to financial institutions around in a financial services administration. I started this business back at the end of 2011, and today we're a business of 350 people. Global business, in fact, in four continents, eight countries around the world. So very excited to share some of my insights on my journey.

**Sharon Williams** (2:13)
Thank you. And we can't wait to delve into it. So Mia, the first question that Nisha and I have to ask you, because we know a bit about your background, and we know that pre GLAS, you already had a very successful career in the city. You're on a six-figure salary. What would inspire you to leave all of that behind and throw yourself into starting up a new business and facing all of that uncertainty?

**Mia Drennan** (2:39)
Sure. Well, I think, yeah, just to perhaps to give a little bit of background in terms of how I found myself sitting here today. Funnily enough, I originally went to art college, had nothing to do with wanting to. I vowed I'd never work in an office. Long and short of it is that journey took me into the city when I was in my late teens and early 20s, and I ended up doing a lot of temping work where you turn up on a Monday morning and they tell you what your job was going to be for that week. So you had to be ready to go and prepared to make sure that you could get through the week, and it gave me a huge amount of experience looking at different businesses and how different businesses were run. From then on in, I then found myself working at KPMG. That was my first proper job as such. That then led me on to getting involved with the capital markets and how the capital markets worked. I then moved into a UK law firm called Simmons and Simmons, which is now a global law firm, where I was able to really work alongside the lawyers and understand the intricacies of debt repackaging. And that was really before the collateralized debt obligations came out. So really interesting work with a lot of big investment banks. And then on the back of me working alongside these lawyers, I got asked by Citibank if I'd like to go into their agency and trust business. And that was probably the first foray into the thing that I'm doing today.
And I had a couple of years working at Citibank in different roles, but got to learn a whole new job and really enjoyed being really at the heart of financial transactions. And then I was asked to go and start a business at the Bank of New York, which I did for five years, and grew that to a multimillion-dollar revenue line with about 50 people working for me in Europe. The reason I, I mean, I love my job at the Bank of New York, they're very entrepreneurial. And I think if I look back on my career, I've probably always been a bit of an entrepreneur without really realizing it. Always kind of solution-driven, finding opportunities and creating opportunities for my employers. What happened in the year I left the Bank of New York was that I was promised, I was working towards having a larger job in the bank and put myself forward for that opportunity, which I did not get for various reasons. And I decided that I was going to lose something different. And so at that particular time, this is 2005 now, the easier path would have been for Mia to leave and go work for a competitor. However, when I actually investigated, a client of mine who was in the US was looking to set up an office in London. And the long story of it is, a conversation happened. The next thing I'd actually said, I can do that, I can help you. And I want to set up a company to help you do that. I don't want to do it under your name. And we spot up what I did. And I thought, I'm going to go and give it a go. So, I wanted to be my own boss, sick of the situation of being in a corporate world where it was always hard to deliver the sort of client service I wanted to do, and want to do something different. And I thought to myself, when I was actually leaving the bank, like the question you just asked me Sharon, a lot of people said to me, well, how are you going to survive? But what are you going to do if it doesn't work out? And I said, well, number one, I really hope that me leaving this job means that I can get another job in the future. I'll always be able to get another job. But actually, I would hope that my experience will actually make me more attractive to future employers if it doesn't work out. Left the bank and started the journey towards GLAS. And as things worked out, about a year into me working for this particular company, the people that had hired me decided to go to another firm, and their firm said, actually, we just want to stay in the US, we don't want to come to Europe anymore. But fortunately, as I was knocking on the doors of all the future clients of this business, who happened to be friends and peers in the market, a corporate trust and agency, they said to me, Mia, you know, everybody in the market, and it was 2006 by this time, how about you help us find people to come work for us? And that put a light bulb in my mind, and ultimately, there was not a specific recruiter that dealt with corporate trust and agency. So, I flipped the switch and became the go-to firm for people wanting to go as corporate trust and agency, which I then did for the next number of years. And they came out on the other side of that, I've decided after that, you know, I've had enough of recruitment, it's a great way to learn and run a business, but I really wanted to get back into doing deals. But by seven years had gone by, I was not going to go work for anybody else at this point. So I thought, how do I set up my agency and trust either? In 2011, I started working on a blueprint for how I could use my skills and experience to start that business. And I realized that this business, which was initially focused on servicing loan transactions for clients, could also be set up with a little bit of capital and at that time, no regulation. And so I went about putting together a plan of action, 400 meetings behind me, and then got GLAS off the ground.