How Help to Grow: Management accelerated this Chartered Manager’s career

Hannah Dunkley CMgr MCMI’s family has always been deeply into cars. Living just five minutes from Silverstone, home to the British Grand Prix, she grew up around the sounds, smells and thrill of racing. 

While her brother studied for an automotive degree at university, Hannah found herself working at PwC and then a smaller accountancy firm. She soon began craving faster, more challenging work. So, when she saw an ad for Singer Vehicle Design, a start-up that “reimagined” Porsches to clients’ specifications, she sped into the exciting world of SMEs. 

Hannah became Singer’s head of finance a year ago. She leads a team that works in every corner of the company, doing everything from financial planning and analysis to payroll and accounts payable. Wherever the business needs them, they’ll be there to help. It was her first senior post and presented a steep learning curve.  

“In early 2022, it was literally just me handling finance,” she says, “but I built and trained the team up and now we're ten people. Building the team was a massive achievement. I had to learn every single thing as I went.”

Growing a team in the male-dominated automotive sector

This neatly sums up one of the key challenges Hannah faced as a young manager (she was 26 when she reached that position): move to a start-up and you won’t have the formal support you may have been used to in more corporate roles.

“It was quite daunting,” Hannah explains. “There was no path being set. You’re simply told you need to make it work. I wrote pretty much all the processes and things – all from scratch.”

There was another reason why she found the management lane intimidating: the automotive sector lacks gender balance. 

“It’s quite a male-oriented environment,” says Hannah. “There aren’t many female managers. I knew I had to make a mark to be noticed.”

The CMI process really solidifies what you’ve been through and enables reflection

The value of Help to Grow: Management

In early 2023, Hannah saw an ad for the government’s Help to Grow: Management course and immediately saw how it could boost her abilities. She spent around three months studying alongside her job. 

The Help to Grow: Management course gave her access to a business mentor, plus weekly seminars at Coventry University, which covered a broad range of topics, from sales to team building.