What Eleanor Jeffrey, Head of Internal Audit at Royal London, did to win the 2025 Audit & Risk Award for Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Champion
Described as a “driver of progress” in Group Internal Audit at Royal London, Eleanor Jeffrey has not only used her dyslexia-related talents to excel at her job, but has also led initiatives to help other neurodiverse people to do the same. Her work championing inclusivity and the strengths that people with a range of differences bring to internal audit won her 2025’s Audit & Risk Award for Diversity and Inclusion Champion.
Carrie Johnson, Protection Director at Royal London, wrote in the nomination that Jeffrey had “used her personal stories to increase awareness of neurodiversity across the business”. She said, “this gives her a platform for action – challenging leadership in the business to ensure different perspectives and difficulties are considered and resulting in changes which help everyone perform at their best.”
Luke McKeown, Co-Chair of Royal London’s PRIDE Network, spoke of her “natural tendency to cut through the noise and get to the heart of the issue”. He wrote that “there are often times where internal politics, budgets and personal opinions can coincide. Eleanor is able to negotiate through it all in a very simple, yet hard to truly master way.” He added that she is “authentically committed to improving the lives of the underrepresented.”
Tone from the top
Royal London is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion that reflects and celebrates the diversity of its customers. Jeffrey co-chairs its Disability Awareness and Neurodiversity Network (DAWN), one of the company’s “inclusion networks” and also sits on the D&I senior leadership team.
By sharing her own experiences of dyslexia, she has created insights into how dyslexia has helped her career and encouraged others to discuss their own diversities. She demonstrates that people with various neurodiversities and disabilities can be promoted to senior leadership positions because of their unique strengths, not in spite of them.
“I didn’t find out I was dyslexic until I was 18, because at school I was seen as ‘too smart to be dyslexic’,” she says. “My Mum and my brother are both dyslexic, so it made me realise I might be. It explained many things about the way I think.”
She realised that being dyslexic made her extremely good at some things, so focused on these and on finding different ways to do the things she found difficult. This was not always easy. “If you gave me a script, I would struggle to read it out loud. It just doesn’t flow,” she says.
“This means that I have an incredibly good memory, because I’ve learnt to memorise things I have to say in public. However, it also made me scared of public speaking, so I’ve made myself step out of my comfort zone and do this more. It really does get easier each time.”
Some things she learnt the hard way. One of her worst fears was that a manager would give her a long report late in the afternoon and ask her to present on it the next morning. Now, she’s braver about pushing back and finding alternative ways to access the material.
She’s also found that joking about her experiences with dyslexia helps other people to be honest about theirs. “I didn’t always talk about it. I wish I’d been diagnosed earlier because it would have made some lessons easier,” she says. “It can be particularly challenging for women trying to progress in their careers – I once had a manager who said he wouldn’t read a report I had written because it was ‘too dyslexic’. I wouldn’t take that now.”
She became determined to use her senior position to help others with similar challenges when she returned to work after having children. She didn’t want to do things “half-heartedly” so she decided to join DAWN. This is one of several inclusion networks led by employees (others focus on women at work, ethnicity and religion and sexual orientation). One of the current co-chairs was leaving the business, so Jeffrey agreed to take her place.
She says that her senior leadership position has helped the group to reach out to the top levels of the company for support and influence. This is ironic, given that Jeffrey was initially reluctant to make an issue of her seniority.
The fact that Royal London fully supports the networks makes it a “phenomenal” company to work for, she adds. “Last week I was in Alderley to talk to senior board members about our network I was given 45 minutes to present to the board, so it really isn’t a tick-box exercise.”
Internal audit strengths
Jeffrey also believes that her internal audit skills have helped her to raise issues at all levels of the company. She says she is used to having sensitive conversations and her internal audit experience has helped her learn about other diversity issues.
“For example, I had a Muslim man in my team and had some great conversations with him that I think some people might shy away from,” Jeffrey says. “I start by admitting that I may say things clumsily, but the intention is to educate myself and be respectful.”
She says that internal audit teaches you skills for building personal relationships and asking questions about emotive topics. “I’ve started following a trans person on Instagram because I know very little about this and they raise issues and thoughts that are really interesting,” she adds. “You won’t necessarily know if someone has a difference if you don’t ask.”
What works?
One of the first things Jeffrey did with DAWN was to hold virtual meetings with teams across the business to talk about neurodiversity and how dyslexia affected her. “We played a game switching around alphabet letters to demonstrate different ways of seeing words and many people contacted me to say it was useful,” she says.
As a member of the D&I senior leadership team, she works on plans to support diversity. These include advertising all internal audit roles (and, increasingly, those in other functions) on all the staff diversity networks.
She also organises quarterly events. At one of these, Paralympian Nathan MacQueen MBE shared his experiences of surviving a motorbike crash and going on to win a Paralympic gold medal.
“We did an in-person Q&A and recorded it so it could be broadcast across all our networks,” Jeffrey says. “I asked him to talk to us because I realised how few people in wheelchairs we see in offices.”
The next event focuses on autism and she will talk to a colleague’s daughter about how this affects her. A previous session focused on people with long-term health conditions, such as diabetes and Crones Disease. Another involved a company that provides physiotherapy for people with musculo-skeletal conditions.
Ideas for events can be inspired by responses to a half-yearly colleague engagement survey. This prompted Jeffrey to plan a session on anxiety. “Last year we focused on invisible disabilities and this year we’re exploring visible ones,” she says. “Next year, we plan to focus on issues such as anxiety and will produce study packs to help teams explore the issues at all levels.”
She emphasises that she and her colleagues in DAWN are not experts, but they are keen to educate themselves and others. “We now want to work with recruitment and look at diversity in our graduate training schemes,” she adds.
Practical support is important. During Dyslexia Week, Jeffrey hosted an event where she interviewed a colleague with dyslexia and showcased software that helps people with additional needs – many people followed this up after the event.
She also helped to secure priority access for people with additional needs to gain a Co-pilot license. “We have a list of nine types of software that help various issues and we try to put these in place immediately for new starters,” she says.
Thinking differently
Jeffrey has positively repositioned perceptions of neurodiversity within internal audit and the wider company by focusing more on talents than on difficulties. “My brain doesn’t think in straight lines. This makes me very curious – I suspect I have other neurodiversities as well as dyslexia,” she says. “I jump from topic to topic, which can frustrate others, but I see it as a positive.”
She has added dyslexia to her LinkedIn profile to emphasise that she sees it as something that is a skill for her. “It’s useful in internal audit because I’m good at going down rabbit holes in conversations, which makes me ask unexpected questions and think about issues differently,” she explains.
Understanding diversity is also important when you need to communicate with board leaders, she adds. Many senior leaders do not admit to hidden differences. But understanding how leaders prefer to receive information is an important part of making internal audit reports effective.
Neurodiversity may also hold talented people back from applying for board positions. “At board level, you are expected to read reports quickly and give inspiring public talks and I struggle to do this,” she says. “I’m forcing myself to do it so I improve, because I’d like to broaden my experiences by joining the boards of charities and schools.”
The awards
To her amazement, Jeffrey found she had been nominated for two awards that were holding events on the same night. She chose to attend the Audit & Risk Awards event and was delighted that she did – partly because she won and partly because of the people who attended.
“It was a really special occasion because so many people were there to celebrate, talk to each other and find out what other teams are doing,” she says. “I would never have won this award without the support of the people at Royal London and Arleen McGichen, Group Chief Audit Officer, who has been enormously supportive.”
Nominations for the 2026 Audit & Risk Awards are now open.