Julie White

Julie White (born 1967) is a British businesswoman and entrepreneur, who has risen to prominence after becoming the managing director of a multimillion-pound diamond drilling company. At the time she took control of Coventry-based D-Drill in 2008, she was the only woman to run a business of its type. White and her company have won several awards, both from her industry and the wider business community. Life and career Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, she was raised in the city, and attended Warwickshire College where she studied business management. After graduating with moderate grades she went travelling around the world, working in a number of jobs in the process, including selling pizza on a beach and being the skipper of a yacht. On returning to the UK she studied NVQ qualifications in business, and started her first business in 2001. The company, Superfloor UK Ltd, introduced a new techniques for specialist floor preparation to the UK, and helped to establish her as a businesswoman in the Midlands. In 2008 she completed a management buy-out of D-Drill, a business her father had founded during the 1960s, at the time becoming the only woman to run a company of its type. Her father subsequently asked her to take over D-Drill from him. She felt she could only do so, however, if she bought the company. D-Drill's turnover fell by 40% during the first six months of her tenure, and she undertook a programme of restructuring and modernisation. Under her stewardship, White has invested heavily in training and apprenticeships, continuing a strategy first implemented by her father, and underwent some training herself to better understand her business. According to a 2012 article by the BBC, D-Drill's spending on training was five times the industry average, while some 45 percent of the company's workforce was in the process of training, or had completed their apprenticeships with D-Drill. White wrote of her belief in the importance of apprenticeship training in an article for the Huffington Post in March 2013.