Spotlight On Fiona Stilwell, CEO of PETA

PETA Ltd is a training and apprenticeship provider based in Portsmouth. We offer corporate training courses and apprenticeship programmes in Engineering, IT, Health & Safety, Business, Management and Finance. We are a registered charity, directed by an executive council of leaders elected from our member base. We operate on a self-financing basis and are non-profit making, which means all our funds are reinvested into the services and training we deliver.

As the CEO I see my role as supporting, developing, coaching and challenging the team to be the best they can be to support our employers and apprentices.

I started my career in the hospitality sector and was leading a team at 18, I truly believe this has helped me in my current role as I have been able to succeed and fail over many years to help develop my leadership capability.

Being offered my current role as CEO of PETA, I feel it is a perfect blend of using my skills from a corporate role and public sector to lead a purposeful organisation.

If you believe something will happen it will – both positive and negative.

I am fascinated by business so anything business-related which has an ethical purpose I would enjoy.

We are really focused on modernising the delivery and looking forward to continue working closely with our employers to develop new programmes to meet their future needs.

We are owned and governed by local employers who are members of PETA Ltd, this ensures our delivery meets employers future needs.

We have benefitted from participating in the local skills improvement plan work which ALPS/ALPHI have ensured that member organisations have been consulted with.

Continuing funding rule changes and a lack of increase to funding to apprenticeship standards.