Trainee to ‘top dog’: How one important decision aged 18 changed AAT CEO Sarah Beale’s life forever
27 August 2024
As the dust settles and decision-time beckons for thousands of students who received their A-level and GCSE results last week, AAT CEO Sarah Beale and business owner Grace Hardy have been talking about the power of apprenticeships.
In the last week, young people in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. As always, some results are met with joy, others relief, and some - disappointment.
However, AAT CEO Sarah Beale has been quick to emphasise that those results do not shut out anyone from still having a whole host of opportunities available to them – including apprenticeships.
Appearing on the Unconventional Podcast, hosted by Grace Hardy, 22, who recently studied AAT as part of her professional apprenticeship.
Beale spoke of how her own apprenticeship route set her up with the skills to get a head-start in her career, navigate professional environments and come full circle to become CEO of the organisation she trained with back at the start of her career.
The AAT CEO was quick to point out the value that businesses place on apprentices – especially in Beale’s case given her first-hand experience.
“People like me who come through that route, really value other people who come through that route. You want to throw the ladder down – help other people get the start that you were lucky enough to have.”
Before becoming CEO of AAT and indeed working at executive level anywhere, Beale was a small business owner herself, running her own dance classes in her teens.
Hardy's other podcast guests have included former Minister of State for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, Robert Halfon. In addition to podcasting, she runs her own accountancy practice, Hardy Accounting, at the age of just 22.
In her interview with Beale, Hard spoke of university not feeling compatible for her given her struggles with dyslexia, but apprenticeships feeling like a more accessible route.
Beale and Hardy teamed up last week for a series of broadcast interviews promoting the apprenticeship route as an avenue to enter a variety of professions including accountancy, or to develop the skills and knowledge needed to pursue entrepreneurship.
In addition to several tag-team interviews for regional radio outlets, Beale appeared on Times Radio while Hardy’s interviews included a feature in the Telegraph.
AAT’s new research supporting apprenticeship avenues as a valid option for school-leavers was also covered by the Times and the Sun last week, as well as by various trade publications.
