As she prepares for retirement in 2025, Juliette Rayner, CEO of ERIC, The Children's Bowel & Bladder Charity, reflects on the triumphs and challenges of life as a charity CEO and the opportunities that await aspiring CEOs in the sector today.
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Melissa: Tell me a bit about your journey to CEO. What was your background?

Juliette: I spent 29 years in the civil service, where I had the privilege of working across many different policy areas, including children’s health and wellbeing. It gave me a great grounding in many of the issues I work with today, and transferrable skills to lead people, teams and stakeholders. In my last few years there I worked largely with the voluntary and community sector, supporting and empowering communities. I decided that this was where I saw my future. I was CEO for a unique heritage site in Bristol before joining ERIC, The Children's Bowel & Bladder Charity. Becoming a charity CEO has been both challenging and gratifying – in a small charity you’re involved in it all, and that is so exciting.

Melissa: What appealed to you about ERIC?

Juliette: For many children, bowel and bladder issues are something they feel a huge sense of shame about. 1.5 million children in the UK struggle with bowel and bladder issues; that’s around 1 in 9, or 3 in every primary school class – and yet it’s a topic nobody wants to talk about. There’s obviously a huge concern for the health and wellbeing of these children, but beyond that, for me personally it’s the injustice they face, and the stigmatisation of this issue that I wanted to tackle. It really isn’t fair that children are suffering in this way, and ERIC is in the perfect position to do something about that.

Melissa: Are there any things you wish you’d known when you started as CEO?

Juliette: Starting as a CEO you learn as much as possible about an organisation beforehand, but there are some things that aren’t obvious from the outside, which you have to pick up. You can’t ever fully understand the culture of an organisation from the outside, for example. Had I fully understood the culture as it was at ERIC beforehand, I would still have been excited to start making a difference, but I might have come in with a slightly different approach. We now have a culture that we’re really proud of, but that took time to cultivate. I think you have to go in with an open mind when you start. You can’t prejudge how it will be.

Melissa: What are the biggest challenges and triumphs you have experienced in your role as a CEO?

Juliette: The financial situation was very challenging in my early days at ERIC, something I hadn’t fully appreciated from the outset, but that became apparent once I’d arrived. I’m really proud of how far we’ve come in that regard.

In terms of triumphs, the work we have done to build ERIC Young Champions is something I think will have a lasting impact. It’s an engagement programme designed to hear the voices of young people living with bowel and bladder conditions. They’ve worked hard to conduct a survey of their fellow students and produce a report on young people’s bowel and bladder health which we’ll be releasing in January. We hope it will move the conversation on and give us a platform to work with schools, local authorities and policy makers to improve children’s bowel and bladder health at school.

I’m also really proud of our potty training e-learning offering, which was launched this year. We’ve been talking for a long time about the importance of early interventions in bowel and bladder health, so being able to offer this training for early years practitioners and improve their knowledge in this area will be great.

Melissa: What are the most important skills for aspiring CEOs to develop?

Juliette: Number one is communication. CEOs are also psychologists to some degree, you need to listen, be willing to have difficult conversations, be honest and open. Those soft skills cannot be underestimated. Ultimately your job is to manage people, so you need to learn how to ask the right questions at the right time and build trust. Sometimes you need to get out of their way and let them get on with it; that’s an important skill too!

Positivity is essential. You’ve got to be a cup half full person to be an effective CEO. Even when something hasn’t gone as well as you’d hoped, you must take the lessons from it and move on. To keep the wheels turning, you’ve got to be an optimist.

Melissa: What would be your advice to others aspiring to grow into a charity CEO role?

Juliette: Volunteer as a trustee. You’ll learn a lot about how a charity operates and having that board experience will give you the strategic oversight, and the understanding on a different level about how boards and organisations work. When you’re a CEO you’ll be managing upwards as well as downwards, so being a trustee will help you to understand that layer of it.

It's helpful to talk to people – find a charity CEO you admire and ask them about their journey. Consider finding a professional coach who can talk to you about skills.

Melissa: If you could do it all again, are there any things you would have done differently?

Juliette: I’m bolder and more confident now than I’ve ever been, but that’s probably because of everything I’ve learned along the way. If I could do it all again, I’d try to do that from the start. Trust yourself and your own decisions, and don’t be afraid to stand up for that. I’m retiring now with that knowledge, but if you can hone in on that from the start, it will set you up well.

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