At Nigel Wright Group’s latest webinar for HR professionals in food and beverage production, Sarah Stokes, now Operations Director at Oleon, shared her story: a surprising but inspiring jump from HR leadership into senior operations. The event offered hands-on insight into leadership development, cross-department career moves, and how HR in manufacturing needs to keep up with new industry demands.
A career built on people and experience
(Sarah Stokes, Operations Director at Oleon)
Sarah kicked things off with a bit of background on Oleon, previously The Kerfoot Group, a longstanding Yorkshire-based oils supplier in food, health & beauty, and industrial markets. Over time, it’s transformed from family-run roots into part of the global Avril Group, with newer branding, deeper structure and bigger-scale goals. Through every stage, Sarah’s been right in the centre, starting in senior HR roles, shaping strategy from the boardroom.
Her journey began in retail at IKEA and B&Q. A stint covering maternity leave in HR wasn’t supposed to stick, but, as she put it, “it just fits.” By 2011, she joined Kerfoot as the lone HR Manager: recruiting, handling employee issues, planning workforce needs, and making sure compliance was sorted. From there she pushed for more structure, helped the organisation navigate acquisition, and eventually joined the board as HR Director.
As the company moved from family ownership to a corporate model, under a female-led board and with strong support from then-CEO Sarah Bradley, Sarah shifted gears. “No one builds their career alone,” she said, stressing how mentoring and shared leadership modelled her own style.
A shift into operations
Sarah didn’t expect the offer when it came. She’d never trained in engineering or technical operations. She admitted she doubted herself at first. But her proven leadership, broad business experience, and people-first stance made her the stand-out pick for the role.
She didn’t try to mimic an operations expert. Instead, she said to her team, “You’ve been doing brilliant work for years, you don’t need me to tell you how. What I can do is offer a fresh view, question what’s familiar, and help link everything together.”
That approach has worked. Her deep knowledge of the business, focus on employee engagement, and steady leadership have been instrumental in guiding the organisation through its rebrand to Oleon, the introduction of new reporting structures, and the ongoing integration of SAP S/4HANA.
Rethinking how leaders grow
Sarah’s move sparked a deeper conversation about development. She referenced the 70‑20‑10 model Avril Group uses: most learning (70%) happens on the job, with some guidance (20%) and a little formal training (10%). She said it felt true in her case; nothing prepared her more than doing the work and talking to people across the company.
In the Q&A, she gave advice to her younger HR-self: learn the business end-to-end. Know who talks to whom. Understand where decisions stem from. And see where the real value lies. She believes HR leaders, especially, should stay tuned into daily business rhythms if they want to lead change.
Hiring differently
She also flagged a challenge: too many leaders, especially in food and drink manufacturing, filter candidates by technical qualifications only. Sarah’s view: a strong leader brings business judgment, empathy and influence, and that can matter just as much as being technically rooted. Her point: internal candidates have track records and trust. Outside hires? CVs and quick interviews don’t always tell the whole story. HR, she suggested, must challenge that bias and guide hiring managers to look deeper.
A people-first leadership story
Sarah’s move from HR to operations isn’t a one-off; it’s a sign of something shifting. It shows that a technical background doesn’t have to be the gatekeeper to senior roles. What really mattered in her case was knowing the business, having people’s trust and leading in a genuinely people-first way.
She summed it up simply:
“Leadership is leadership. People are people.” A neat reminder that real leadership potential can be found in unexpected places — sometimes right under our noses.
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