As part of our Leadership Index campaign, we’re spotlighting leaders who are not only shaping their industries but also reshaping what leadership itself looks like.
Meri Williams is one of those leaders.
From corporate IT at Procter & Gamble to transforming UK government services, scaling fintech at Monzo, leading digital retail at M&S, and advancing AI-driven drug discovery in medtech, Meri’s career spans sectors that traditionally resist outsiders.
At first glance, the path looks non-linear. But there’s a clear through-line: delivering modern engineering under constraint.
In this Leadership Index conversation, Meri reflects on resilience, identity, impact, and building success on your own terms.
Q: Your career doesn’t follow a straight line. How do you describe it?
On paper, it looks disjointed—corporate IT, government, fintech, retail, medtech, scale-ups and turnarounds.
But the thread is consistent: modern engineering under constraint.
I’ve stepped into environments where something is hard—legacy systems, regulators, funding pressure, cultural resistance—and helped teams modernise and deliver meaningful change. The industry changes. The leadership challenge doesn’t.
Q: How did your career begin?
I joined Procter & Gamble in the UK and stayed for ten years.
I started as a systems analyst, moved into architecture, then programme and product leadership as the company outsourced large parts of its technology. By my late twenties, I was running Northern European operations—overseeing technology services for 12,000 employees with a $100 million budget.
It was designed as a broad leadership role. It worked. But I realised I missed being close to technology itself.
Q: What prompted you to leave?
I had always run teams in modern, agile ways—but quietly. In corporate IT at the time, that language wasn’t always welcomed.
If I wanted to be a true engineering leader, I needed to leave. I expected to move into Big Tech. Instead, I received a very different pitch:
“We’re going to fix the government.”
Q: What was it like at Government Digital Service?
I joined the team delivering GOV.UK. We grew from 30 to 300 people in nine months after a launch date had already been promised.
It was intense—but not unfamiliar. Government and corporate IT share similar structural constraints. My ability to translate modern engineering practices into traditional environments proved invaluable.
The work had an enormous public impact. But it was also personally complex. Civil service neutrality meant I couldn’t publicly express political opinions—even during debates about same-sex marriage while married to a woman.
Around that time, I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic condition affecting my joints. It forced a pause in my career and left a visible gap on my CV.
Q: How did that diagnosis shape your leadership?
It changed my relationship with work.
Vodafone hired me partly because they were willing to wait six months while I adjusted. That flexibility mattered.
Later, I became CTO of M&S.com and then joined Made.com for my first scale-up experience, doubling the engineering team and strengthening digital foundations.
Careers don’t need to be linear to be meaningful.
Q: Your move to Monzo looked unexpected. What happened?
I had been mentoring Monzo’s founding CTO for years. As the company scaled rapidly without engineering managers, he recognised they needed experienced leadership and invited me to step in as CTO.
We scaled from 50 to 150 engineers in under a year and built proper leadership layers. After two years, I handed the role back.
When COVID hit and revenue collapsed overnight, we executed continuity plans immediately—preparation I’d ensured was in place. As redundancies loomed, I resigned. I believed engineers’ jobs mattered more than mine.
Q: You’ve repeatedly entered industries that often resist outsiders. How?
Outsider status can be powerful.
Banking, telco, retail, medtech—these sectors often prefer insiders. I built a reputation for learning industries quickly and applying strong engineering leadership under constraint.
Relationships matter too. The Monzo opportunity didn’t come from a recruiter. It came from trust built over time.
Careers move forward when someone believes you can do the job before you’ve officially done it.
Q: How has your definition of success evolved?
Early in my career, success meant climbing the ladder in one organisation.
Now it means:
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Impact at scale
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Leaving teams healthier than I found them
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Operating across industries and complexity
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Building legacy—particularly through communities like LeadDev
Titles alone don’t tell the story.
Q: What defines strong leadership for you?
Three things:
Transparency – Engineers value honesty.
Decisiveness – Indecision is costly.
Collaboration – Listen first. Decide second. Explain always.
I also push back on the idea that leaders must always be visionary. In scale-ups, overly audacious visions can overwhelm teams. People need a vision they can reach—not just admire.
Q: You were diagnosed as autistic and ADHD later in your career. What changed?
Not my capability—my self-compassion.
Patterns that once felt like failings—thriving under urgency, struggling without deadlines—suddenly made sense.
People don’t need fixing. They need understanding.
And women, in particular, don’t need to act like men to succeed. Masking is exhausting. When people can be themselves at work, performance improves.
Leadership Index Reflection
Meri Williams’ career challenges the myth that leadership must be linear, traditional, or uniform.
Through The Leadership Index, we’re proud to spotlight leaders who are redefining what success looks like—leaders who build under pressure, operate with integrity, and open doors for others.
Representation matters.
Access matters.
And leadership, at its best, reflects the diversity of the world it serves.
The Leadership Index exists to make that visible.
