This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to Women with Balls, presented by Katie Balls.

Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to women at the top of their respective games about their passions, their battles and what makes them tick.

Today, I'm joined by Dame Helena Morrissey, the head of personal investing at legal and general

investment management, the global fund manager which has nearly a trillion pounds of assets under

management. In her career so far, Helena has not only succeeded in carving at her own path to success,

she has also managed to change the working environment around her. She is the founder

of the 30% Club, an initiative encouraging chairman of major UK companies to aim for 30% of women on

their boards, was appointed a dame in the Queen's 2017 birthday honours list for services to diversity

and financial services, and also found time somewhere along the way to have nine children.

Now, Helena, to start, I thought it would be good to talk us through how you got to where you are today.

You described in your childhood that you were a manic brownie.

Yes, I was always a bit hyperactive. I think I was just made like that, to be honest.

There's nothing to explain it. And I didn't know what I wanted to do in life but

I had gone to comprehensive co-educational school my first experience of how being a girl might be a

disadvantage or at least make you different was being the only girl in my all-male maths class

further maths class as well in my six years, which was quite a testing experience

for me. In reality, I wasn't that great at math, to be honest, which makes me sound a bit masochistic

as well. But I then went and read philosophy at university, went to Cambridge University and fell

into finance, really. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left, and friends of mine,

mostly men actually encouraged me to apply to the city.

And I just really enjoyed the people that I met and accepted a job at Shroed's.

And before you got to university, it's safe to say that you weren't the child of a tiger mum.

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