Helen Wathall MBE - Wathall's

Welcome to The NXTGEN Show, this is Benjamin Brain and it's my mission to share the stories of next generation, family business owners, leaders and entrepreneurs from businesses of all shapes and sizes around the world.

On today’s show, I had the pleasure of being joined by Helen Wathall MBE. 

So, a quick introduction to Helen.

She’s the fifth generation of her family to run Wathall’s which was established in 1858 by her great great grandfather, over 164 years ago, and today are Derby’s longest-established independent funeral directors.  

Helen had originally planned a career in farming, she joined the business for what she thought would be ‘temporarily’ when she was 18 but ended up sticking around and went on to gain experience in every aspect of the business before unexpectedly having to takeover as managing director aged just 29. 

Since then, She has been one of the industry’s vanguard female leaders – including becoming the first woman president of the Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) which represents more than 1,000 family-owned firms and the first female director of Golden Charter – the UK’s largest funeral plan provider, a post she held for 6 years, finishing in December 2021. 

During her tenure as managing director of Wathall’s, Helen has expanded the branch network to 7 offices and has developed new areas of the business – most notably the award-winning Dandelions Bereavement Support programme, and buying Art Stone Memorials.  

This is part of her goal to provide families with the full service from pre-paid funeral plans and arranging funerals to providing bereavement support and designing and erecting burial and cremation stones.

And if that wasn’t enough Helen is also Board chair of St Peters Quarter Business Improvement District.

This turned out to be another brilliant business interview with a forward thinking, ambitious and super successful next generation family business owner

Enjoy!