Meet the Male Allies Backing Women into Work in the North East
At Smart Works Newcastle, we know that empowering women is a collective mission, and allyship from men is crucial to making lasting change.
We asked James Carss, founder of Castle Peak why he backs our misson, what allyship means to him, and his advice for the next generation of working women.
I am originally from the North East, studied in Bedfordshire and have spent my entire career within recruitment and executive search. My career has been very much global and outside the region until I came back a few year ago. 6 years were spent in London, 12 in Hong Kong and 2 in Canada. I founded Castle Peak in January 2024 to provide an executive search offering which focusses on diversity and inclusion at Board and Executive level. Along with the search side we also operate as consultancy around inclusion and partner with like minded organisations who have the same goals or perhaps on a journey.
The organisation I was previously MD for had some previous connections but I wasn’t really that involved with that. It was later after founding Castle Peak through two people I’ve known for a while and immensely respect and look up too. Firstly, Susan Fulton one of your trustees and secondly Sophie Milliken your Chair! I was working with them both through their organisations (Gentoo & Moja) and became increasingly aware of the work Smart Works does to support Women into employment. I could see many parallels and crossover in what we do and everything is underlined by values and purpose, I later attended some events, met other members of the team and was then privileged to be asked to be a male ally.
Firstly, as I said it’s a privilege and a massive honour to be an ally. It’s a role (I hope) I do in many capacities in my job and life.It’s also an obligation and duty to represent wants fair and right morally and legally and to champion the cause of anyone in any capacity who is marginalised or discriminated against. In terms of smart works this means a lot and I’m in great company from the team and other male allies that I can learn from. Gender equality in the workplace and closing the gender pay gap is still something we should all have on the agenda, even in 2025 its not there yet. So, these issues operate at all levels. Just being able to get help women into work is so important, socio-economic barriers exist and persist and its all of our responsibility to rip these down and do the right and the fair thing.
Many! And a really tough question to answer. I’m going to pick two though sorry (!) firstly that’s Lucy Winskill. I think you could say she was a path finder, she paved the way for many others, her background, her manner her professionalism and positive outlook is a blueprint for anyone to learn from and she is an absolute role model. Secondly, Ngozi Lynn Cole, again her intelligence, attitude and positivity and the way in which she talks and discusses issues – I could listen to her all day. Both of these people they always have time for everyone.
If you want to start and you want to help and get involved you are already ahead of the game! Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions,try to learn from others life experiences of things you may not have had to deal with. Reach out to chat to the smart works team and male allies like myself, we are always happy to make new relationships.
I proactively look for opportunities to introduce the charity and promote the great work that is done by smart works, I attend events when I can and I try to share social media posts across my own network to increase awareness and create opportunities. It’s a great organisation to be involved with so I feel lucky from that perspective.
Want to support our work?
Heres how to get involved: email samara.laboriel@smartworks.org.uk
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