Happy International Women's Day!

We are marking International Women’s Day by celebrating the work of one of our rising stars. We are very proud of our diverse workforce and are actively encouraging women to build successful careers within the transport industry.

Our managing director, Andrew Wickham has said that “in the past, our industry has been largely dominated by men, but that is fast changing, as we look to recruit the very best talent – and gender just doesn’t come into that decision process.” Currently, around 12% of our workforce are women and this continues to grow every year. This percentage is even higher in some of our sister companies - across Go South Coast, more than 17% are female.

We have a wide range of roles that anyone wishing to join our team can choose from, from being a driver to working in marketing, operations or engineering. Each offers its own mix of challenges and rewards.

Our rising star, Rachel Perkins originally joined the Go-Ahead Group as a graduate management trainee in 2019. She completed a 24-month training programme, spending the majority of her time at Go East Anglia. Rachel, who hails from Braintree in Essex, studied Geography for three years at university, and her final dissertation centred on local bus services. Her enthusiasm for local transport began when she was at college where she regularly travelled on the same bus and got to know the driver who encouraged her to seek a career in the industry.

Throughout her time at Go-East Anglia, she learnt about engineering, operations and, of course, driving. After this, she was seconded to our sister operator Swindon’s Bus Company and loved working with the team there so jumped at the chance to work for Bluestar & Unilink in Southampton. Not only is she manager for Unilink, but she also holds the position of assistant operations manager for Bluestar!

Rachel has emphasised how working in a male dominated environment hasn’t negatively affected her – “I have never felt that my gender has stopped me from striving for what I want to achieve. If I want to aim for something, I’ll work my hardest to achieve it, and won’t let anything hold me back.”

Her role is quite varied, one moment she could be supporting a drier through a difficult time, the next she could be meeting with the University of Southampton about the development of new routes and processes. “At the heart of this are the people – and its working with the teams across their departments that makes my job so rewarding.”

Happy International Women’s Day from all of us here at Bluestar & Unilink!