Northern regional director reflects on 30-year career and urges other women to join the railways on International Women’s Day

Kerry Peters, who was appointed as the regional director for Northern in Yorkshire, Humberside and the East Midlands last year, is urging other women to follow in her footsteps and take on a challenging and rewarding role on the railways, during International Women’s Day (Friday, 8 March).

While the rail industry been historically dominated by men, Northern has taken a different approach to recruitment in recent years to ensure it has a more diverse workforce that better represents the communities it serves.  

Almost 20 per cent of Northern employees are women, as more than 1,380 are employed in a variety of roles across the business.

“People often ask me how it is to be a woman in rail and I can honestly say I have never considered it to be a problem for me,” said Kerry.  

“I think it gives me a platform to help other women to be their very best and that’s what I would prefer to concentrate on, so here I am in my 30^th year of rail and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

She made the comments when she was interviewed as part of Community Rail Lancashire’s 100 Women 100 Journeys project.

Kerry, who was born in Lancashire and lives in Sherburn in Elmet in North Yorkshire, joined the rail industry as a catering stewardess for British Rail in 1994. She went on to lead the team responsible for training the on-board crew on the Pendolino fleet.

In 2005, she became a customer service manager with Virgin Cross Country and was later appointed as business manager, with responsibility for the train operator’s services in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle.

Kerry worked for the operator for 12 years before her decision to fill in for an absent colleague on a train to Scotland led to a chance meeting and an exciting job offer.

“Whilst travelling to Edinburgh, in my role, I realised there was no first class host on the train, so I took it upon myself to dig in, get the trolley ready and hone some of my old skills, so the customers were not left without,” she said.

“Unknown to me, there was a table of three travelling, who I got chatting to and explained they would have to put up with me in the absence of a first class host.

“It turned out one of them was the regional director for Northern and he later contacted me to see if I was interested in joining his team in the North East, as his Head of Trains and Stations.

“After a brutal interview and testing process, I was appointed to the role and stepped into my first executive position.

“I’m not going to lie, Northern was a beast of a company with over 7,000 staff and I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right move initially.

“I realised how much I still didn’t know about the railway and had to learn fast. Thankfully I was supported by a fantastic team and once I got settled in, I never looked back.”

She was promoted to regional director for the North East in 2020 before being appointed to her current role last summer, replacing Tony Baxter, who left to become operations director at Chiltern Railways.

In 2022, Kerry was named on Northern Power Women’s ‘Power List’ for her work to help accelerate gender equality in the North of England. She is also a member of the Rail Delivery Group’s steering group tackling sexual harassment in the industry.

Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.