Sandra Waterhouse

Sandra Waterhouse is the Global Director of Operations for Cambridge University Press and a member of the Press Board since 2012. After starting work at the Press in 1978 as a trainee in the Accounts and Costing Department, she has since worked her way up through a number of senior roles.
 

These days it seems that you need a degree to do anything, so I’m quite pleased that I was able to do well without one in the first place. There’s always been a part of me that likes to break the rules, stretch myself and take on a challenge.

I was a bit rebellious as a teenager: I would party hard and come home late after curfew. I think I was quite hard work for my parents. I remember the day I told my father I wasn’t going to go to university; he was incredibly disappointed as I think he had dreams of me being a barrister. But back then there was nothing I really wanted to study and I was fed up being at school. Many years later I was put forward for a Cambridge MA and my dad was chuffed to pieces, but to be honest I think part of me felt that I didn’t deserve it. The Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press said it wasn’t really an honorary degree because I’d fully earned it, but I still don’t completely buy that.

I’m quite uncomfortable with being seen as successful. I know it’s a strange position to hold because if I step back and look at it, of course I’ve been successful. I’ve got a great career and I have a very positive home life. From the outside I’d probably be seen as successful because I’ve got responsibility for Global Operations and I’m one of only three women on the Press Board. But it feels a bit too easy if I’m really honest. I move in reasonably successful circles and when I think about the people I really rate, it’s the ones who have built something from scratch and really grafted. I’ve had challenges, but perhaps I didn’t see them as significant enough to allow myself to properly value my achievements. I know that’s a bit nonsensical; intellectually I get that I am successful but emotionally I don’t.

“When I think about the people I really rate, it’s the ones who have built something from scratch and really grafted.”

Looking back on my time at Cambridge University Press I don’t think gender has been an issue for me at all. Being a woman in the print business in the 1980s had its moments but they didn’t overly affect me. I do recall a meeting where a colleague said to me, ‘I don’t know why you’re even talking, because you’ve got babies at home and that’s where you should be.’ My approach was not to lower myself to that level and just get on and do my job really, really well. You’re going to get spiteful comments thrown at you at different points in your career and you need to move past them.

I can remember my mum saying to me, ‘You really need to let go more, you don’t have to be superwoman.’ I’d listen to all of that and think it was nonsense, but at that point I was still attempting to live up to an impossible standard. I was trying to run a spotless house, bring up the children brilliantly and have a successful career. After my first marriage broke down in the early nineties, I didn’t want anybody to say to me that I couldn’t manage. Self-reliance was very important to me and for a long time it was a necessity as I was on my own.

“I don’t think for me success can ever be just about the job. It’s no good having a great job and then a lousy family life.”

Being as independent and forceful as I am, I never thought that I would settle down again, but actually I have learnt that I like to have somebody to lean on. I think I was a bit deluded to believe I could do it all myself. My husband taught me to share the load and to achieve a better balance. I have a very active life, but it needs to be about more than work. I enjoy going to a party, or heading off to the spa with my girlfriends or setting myself a new physical challenge. It’s also important to have some down time and a really good support structure. I used not to have that and without it life can be really, really miserable.

I don’t think for me success can ever be just about the job. It’s no good having a great job and then a lousy family life. I think you need to do the best you can and it’s down to you to define what that means, it’s no good somebody else doing it for you. You’ll earn respect just from the fact that everybody knows you’re giving all you can.

I was fifty-five in January, so I do wonder what the next few years will hold. Will I stay at work? Will I retire early? My husband and I both have a dream to live by the sea and sail. My daughter’s married and my son has gone off travelling, so there is a bit of empty-nest syndrome, but I can’t imagine that I’m going to put my feet up and start knitting any day soon.