Introducing Nina Brazier
My name is Nina, I am a Director of Consulting Delivery at CGI and have been with the company for 18 months.
What has been the impact of your work at CGI?
I work in Public Safety, where we are supporting our customers in delivering complex programmes which are critical to the UK running safely. It is an exciting place to be. I am currently working on a large-scale programme that is moving at great pace, it is high profile and cannot afford to slow down or miss a milestone. My role is to ensure we are bringing value every single day, that our team are actively moving the programme forward in the right direction and to bring clarity in the complexity.
My roles within Public Safety have allowed me to oversee and assure outcome-based deliveries for various parts of the Home Office. To help solve complex challenges, to ensure we deploy CGI Partners with a technical skillset that the Home Office need in that time. It’s a privilege to turn up every day and be able to support and influence these programmes.
What unique challenges and opportunities come with leading public safety projects in today’s rapidly changing landscape?
- Funding – it is taxpayers money paying for this work, both ourselves and the customer have to be constantly assessing value gained from the investment made. There are also funding challenges and policy changes that result in re-prioritisation of some programmes over others so it is a constantly changing landscape. We need to be ready to mitigate these risks and manage the fall out of such decisions.
- Visibility – Our team in the Home Office Sector are working on deliveries that service front line emergency services so the risk and reward is high for getting this right. Ensuring that user requirements are met, that business change and communication is run successfully and that delivery is not deemed by the users and the public as failing are all vital.
- Working as part of an ecosystem – Working with government departments means working within a large ecosystem of other suppliers, contractors as well as civil servants. I personally enjoy this dynamic, in seeing how we fit into and enhance a team, where we can bring something new. It does, however, require strong stakeholder skills and commercial astuteness to understand the contracts others are working to, the boundaries of our own contract and in building collaborative relationships.
Has your perspective on navigating challenges changed as you’ve gained more leadership experience?
Challenges in government delivery tend to be cyclical; new governments, changes and constraints in budgets needing continuous re-prioritisation. Having worked through these challenges with customers at different levels in my career and knowing how they should be navigated and forecast for, it certainly becomes less daunting and more predictable with the ability to understand the constraints the customer is working within
As my career has grown, I am much more in the mindset that every challenge has a solution; so give yourself the grace as a team to identify the options and put the chosen solution into action. It may not be the perfect solution and it may result in difficult conversations being needed but that’s the nature of the work we do. I have mentioned value a lot but as I’ve moved into more senior leadership roles I am more conscious than ever on assessing and assuring the value the team are bringing to our customer. We need to be bringing invaluable outcomes, innovation and challenging the status quo.
The 2025 International Women's Day theme is 'Accelerating Action', how do you empower your teams as a leader?
- My team are recruited and onboarded to bring the skills and experience that they have worked hard to achieve throughout their own careers, so autonomy is important, that they are empowered to deliver. My job is to ensure we have the right people, playing in the right roles, provided with the right culture for the individual to flourish.
- Culture is something I think about, a lot. My focus is always on building a culture I would want to work in, of feeling fulfilled in the work, having the opportunity to do something meaningful and to be respected and safe within the team.
- Understanding that everyone is individual with individual needs and ambitions. Each member of the team will need something different from me as a leader.
How do teams with diverse leadership improve decision-making and innovation in Public Safety?
Both decision making and innovation are vastly improved by pooling the ideas from a range of different perspectives, by drawing on a diverse range of expertise and lived experiences. Having leadership teams who reflect our people, our client and our community draws in and retains talent. It gives assurance that your interests are likely being taken into account rather than decisions being made from limited perspectives.
We are fortunate to have brilliant diversity in Public Safety, it was what first drew me to CGI as being a business I wanted to work for. You can see that great effort has been and continues to be taken to build in that diversity across our team; it doesn’t happen by accident. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a way to go, I would love to see even more so that we can be the best reflection of the community we live in and that our clients live in.
What’s your call to action for organisations looking to create more inclusive leadership opportunities for women?
Representation
Let’s see true gender diversity in our leadership roles. Let’s see people who have diverse backgrounds, who juggle the same real-life juggles everyone else is facing. I like to be completely real with my team, if I have a sick child at home or a sports day I promised to attend, my team know, so that they know that in the teams that I lead, it is completely acceptable to be serious about your career but serious about the responsibilities we have in the rest of our lives too. It needs to be seen and role modelled before it becomes the norm. Don’t assume the answer - don’t assume that the women in your organisation won’t want a job opportunity because it’s messy or unsocial hours – ask them, let them say yes or no, don’t say it for them.
Equality in working hours
I would love to see a time where men are given more opportunity as well as giving themselves permission to share in longer parental leave or to work part time, like women do regularly, to raise families. I believe this will give a shift in equality at work.
Invest in others
Invest in talent within the organisation, at every level. A lot of people’s success in the corporate world is hard work plus your network so be a sponsor or a mentor for someone you admire earlier on in their career to you. Be their voice at the table they don’t yet have a seat at and when the time is right, drag them into the room so they have the opportunity to shine there too.
