Recent data reveals a sobering reversal for gender diversity in the UK’s Top 100 firms, with female leadership sliding back to just 12% of the sector’s top roles. Ramsay Brown Partner Katie Collin, who reached the senior rank by 31 discusses the “cyclical” pressures driving talent out of the pipeline, the non-negotiable role of mentorship, and why the profession must dismantle its “suited-and-booted” image to survive.

The numbers for female leadership in the UK’s Top 100 firms have long been a point of contention, but the latest data feels like a distinct step backward. Despite entry-level cohorts maintaining a 50/50 gender split for years, female leadership has recently slid back to just 12 firms. While women hold roughly 24% of partnership roles across the Top 100, the “leaky pipeline” remains a structural crisis.

To understand why the profession is struggling to retain its most talented women, we spoke with Katie Collin, a Partner at Ramsay Brown. Collin’s own trajectory, making Partner by age 31, is an outlier, but her career path from the high-energy world of music management to the front lines of NHS medical accountancy offers a masterclass in navigating a sector that often feels designed to keep “quirky” personalities in the background.

Read more at: https://accountancyage.com/2026/02/18/katie-collin-on-why-female-leadership-in-the-top-100-is-sliding/