Plans to increase nuclear capacity in the UK have added a significant new dimension to Alison Chappell’s role at RWE npower. Chappell, who is head of nuclear development, relishes the scale of the challenge and the chance to create a whole new business sector within the company.

“One possibility is that, if we get all the consents we need and we go forward to build a plant, my role grows because the organisation and the team are growing. If that was to happen it would contain all the challenge and excitement I would want.”

Chappell joined RWE npower in 2000 after doing an MBA at Warwick through distance learning. She was taken on as an internal consultant for an e-commerce project and, when that project finished, she began developing ways to manage the energy products offered by her employer. In 2006 she was seconded to Germany for two years as a diversity officer. On her return she saw the job she now holds advertised and applied.

Her lack of an engineering background was not an issue. She says: “Women typically do not apply for jobs where they do not meet 110 per cent of the spec, but men often apply for jobs where they meet 70 per cent and think, ‘I’ll wing the rest’.”

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Women are seeking choice, challenge and change, says Glenda Stone

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Her role is a strategic one, overseeing the development of part of the company into a nuclear power provider. Government plans to expand nuclear capacity have “excited the whole business”, Chappell says, adding: “The key challenges are not only engineering ones but the creation of an organisation that will be capable of running a nuclear generation business.” She will be involved with securing funding and establishing partnerships with suppliers, consultancy firms and joint venture partners.

Chappell must also work to placate public concerns surrounding nuclear energy generation. “Ever since Chernobyl there has been a massive public perception of risk associated with nuclear power.”

She points to a moral argument in support of nuclear power: “We live a lifestyle that uses more and more energy and we are putting that burden on to other countries that will suffer first from global warming and environmental damage. We have to take a long, hard look at how we can reduce the burden on them.”

Chappell, who graduated from Cambridge in 1982, says she became more career focused after doing her MBA from 1997 to 2000, which helped her to look at business from a broader perspective. “I started to think that managing people and having an influence over the direction in which a company was going would be an exciting task.”

In the Eighties she had been employed in marketing and consulting, with stints at Rowntree and Coopers & Lybrand (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers). After the birth of her son in 1994 she took on roles such as fundraising for a local school.

She says: “The evidence suggests that at the start of their careers women are less career focused than men and maybe there is a slight aversion to taking on management roles. When I reentered the workplace at npower I was thinking differently”.

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