Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My customers. My castaway this week is the barrister and businesswoman Heather Rabats. It would be fair to describe her as someone who likes a challenge.

From Millwall Football Club to the Royal Opera House,

she has a talent for turning a crisis into an opportunity, which came in handy when she took

over running the chronically dysfunctional Lambeth Council in the mid 90s.

Ten thousand staff, a 900 million pound turnover, and even the advertisement in the paper

touting for candidates said it was probably the worst job in local government.

Born in Jamaica and brought up in Britain, she left school with just a couple of O-levels.

Her teacher said if she was lucky she might work in a shop.

She says life is to be lived. I've always enjoyed standing on the edge and taking risks. So Heather about standing on the edge and taking risks. So Heather about standing on the edge and taking risks and I'm

imagining being in charge. You enjoy that too. I definitely like being in charge and

I've always felt that I can gather everybody's

spirits and energies to take that jump into the unknown together and that's what

I've enjoyed across all the different sectors I've been lucky enough to work in.

Yes, so in your time you have been a governor at the BBC and at the London School of Economics

and of course there's no point in quoting the figures because everybody

knows that most wardrooms in Britain are still male-dominated and still white.

How have you found them as environments to work in.

They've all had their unique and different challenges and I still feel after all these

years that women's voice, obviously not least in football, is still pretty rare.

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