Deborah
Fleming

Deborah is the Marketing & Business Development Director at Walker Morris. Deborah and her team are responsible for the full marketing & BD funnel, from market research, through brand and communications, business development, bids, to CRM and the client experience. The most rewarding aspect about Deborah’s role is that her team is listened to throughout the firm. The size of the business also means that you can really make an impact. And, of course, the team. She works with a great marketing & BD team who have already achieved so much, including the recent rebrand, but she’s excited by the energy and enthusiasm she sees to do more.

“It’s hard to say what your own strengths are, isn’t it?” From a technical perspective, Deborah started in bids, and if she’s honest it’s still where her heart lies. As all bid managers are, it means she’s good at identifying client needs, coming up with a proposition that meets those needs, and communicating it persuasively. Deborah’s energetic (that’s probably the bid thing again), and she loves solving problems and coming up with ideas.  She also likes to think she’s good at inspiring others to do the same.

The amount going on in the business means that Deborah has a lot of plates spinning, which can be challenging. She manages this by trying hard to join the dots, to identify where three small points on the list may form one bigger task, trying to achieve the same goal. Deborah would describe her working style as inclusive and challenging. She wants to hear from everyone, get everyone’s ideas in the pot before making decisions – and she likes her team to challenge her back. Deborah likes to push people out of their comfort zones. She’s optimistic that most people and businesses can achieve more than they give themselves credit for.

The Walker Morris value that resonates with Deborah is that ‘you can be serious without wearing a suit’. She loves that she can be the same person in the office as she is at home. It’s satisfying to her that Walker Morris actively encourages people to get on and do things – to ‘take the bull by the horns’.

She landed in law by accident, despite having achieved a law degree. After university, for reasons that escape her now, she decided she wanted to be in marketing. Deborah did a post-graduate diploma in business marketing and design, later got some CIM qualifications, and entered the world of work. It was only after a couple of years that a role came up in a law firm – Pinsent Curtis Biddle as it was then, and she took it. Deborah has been in law ever since, over 20 years now.

Deborah is also a member of the ESG Steering Committee, which is driving everything in our Positive Impact Report. She’s currently really enjoying and benefiting from being reverse mentored.