Meet the new faces at McCarthy Stone
“We share a vision of transforming lives.” Meet Angela Harding, Service Operations Director, and Fiona Carleton, Managing Director of Services.
Life at McCarthy Stone is one full of vibrancy and joy – our wonderful community is a result of a true team effort, and we are delighted to warmly
welcome two new members into the fold and share their fascinating stories with you.
Meet Fiona Carleton, Managing Director of Services
Together with her partner Gary and their combined four children, Fiona is self-confessed‘mad about dogs’ adding a Springer Spaniel and mini-Dachshund to their busy home life. With a love for travel and any free time filled with cycling, walking and good old fashioned family time, our new Managing Director of Services epitomises the notion of an active lifestyle.
Glaswegian born Fiona initially studied to be an Interpreter at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and can note interpreting for Gorbachev as one of her many enthralling career endeavours! Her early working years were then spent in call centres across multiple sectors (utilities, banking, advertising) before joining Toyota and Lexus, where she ran their customer relations team for eight years.
Fiona’s aviation career then took flight, and she made a move to Gatwick Airport, where she successfully ran the terminals. After a break from the heady heights of managing life in the sky, Fiona headed up the London Ambulance Service’s Control Room Operation as Director, which can count itself as one of the fastest paced‘offices’ in the country! The call of aviation meant that Fiona once more checked into a terminal – this time Heathrow – where she was part of the team that opened Terminal 2 and latterly worked on the expansion of the airport. It was this very project that allowed Fiona to rub shoulders with royalty, she recalls: “I met the Queen and Prince Philip when Terminal 2 opened. Prince Philip stopped to chat and was incisive, witty and exactly how I’d imagine he’d be…”
It’s clear to see that Fiona’s bountiful background in customer facing roles makes her a great new addition to our vibrant community, although we do hope that there are fewer emergencies needing her attention than of her days in the Control Room! When asked of her initial impression of McCarthy Stone she simply said: “I love everything; beautiful apartments and developments to all of the fantastic things on offer. My parents looked into one themselves and I was impressed with the overall product and the process too. I passionately believe we – as a country - need to do more to support our ageing population and not patronise, homogenise or, even worse, ignore the chances we have to make later living one of the best times of our lives. I want to be part of the team that can make this a reality, championing the wellbeing and needs of older people. Our homeowners have made a huge life decision to move into a McCarthy Stone development and my team and I want to honour that by delivering the best service that we can.”
As Fiona looks to the future of her role and ponders how things might develop under her management, she muses: “I want homeowners to have the highest levels of trust in Management Services, our teams, our spending, our facilities. We generate a lot of happiness and great feedback today, and I want to be able to build on that further. Where there are problems, I want customers to be confident that we will work with them to find resolutions – quickly!” We have no doubt that Fiona will fly high in her new role, and her energetic and outgoing approach to life will feel at home at McCarthy Stone.
Meet Angela Harding, Service Operations Director
Living in the Midlands but with a strong calling to be by the sea, our new Service Operations Director, Angela Harding, is often visiting friends up and down the country. When not revelling in the refreshing call of Britain’s coastline, Angela is very much interested in social history, architecture and genealogy. Like her new colleague Fiona,
Angela loves dogs and has a few tropical fish at home – the latter dubbed as a “lockdown hobby which I’ve realised is surprisingly arduous!”
Professionally, Angela’s career is strongly rooted in HR and she firmly believes that it’s people who make any business especially those which are truly customer centric – this is a sentiment that we wholeheartedly share. Having worked in a number of sectors, but most relevantly and recently, at a senior level in retirement living for the last 16 years, Angela is familiar with later life living. “There I was Operations Director for an organisation which builds and runs retirement villages, so am familiar with what we offer and the importance of putting the customer and our staff teams at the heart of what we do.”
Angela is relishing the thought of a new challenge, she says: “Being able to work with some extraordinary older people who, regardless of their age, health or wealth, have a passion for community living and helping to ensure that everyone enjoys a happy and fulfilling lifestyle in their later years. She enjoys nothing more than working with great colleagues who share a vision of transforming lives and providing excellent customer service – in all aspects.
McCarthy Stone made a great first impression on Angela: “I believe this is an organisation which is customer driven and is growing to ensure more older people are able to enjoy high quality accommodation and services. That’s very important to me.” We are looking forward to Angela’s wealth of experience and what that will bring to her new role.
Looking ahead, she has great plans for our community, and is looking forward to the opportunity to work with our Services team and delve into the range of services and facilities that we currently offer to customers, with a view of enriching the lives of our homeowners even more so in the future.
If your paths have not crossed already, we are certain that you will encounter Angela sometime soon. She proudly describes herself as an open and transparent person, who likes to be visible and plans to visit developments as often as possible. As a keen cake lover, we are sure that sweet treats on development visits will be most welcome!
