Her Mum Spotted a Job Ad in the Newspaper — Now She's MD of an Employee-Owned Company That Works for the UN and the EU: Lucy Harrier of Prepress Projects

In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Lucy Harrier — managing director of Prepress Projects Limited, a copy editing, proofreading, and publishing services company based in Perth, Scotland.

Prepress Projects has been going since the early 1990s, started by a husband and wife team. In 2022, it transitioned to employee ownership — a succession model that kept the business and the jobs in Perth. Fourteen of the 16 staff are women.

Their clients include UNICEF, UN Women, the UN Population Fund, and the Publications Office of the European Union. Most of their work is with overseas clients — they've worked with over 53 UNICEF country offices across the world, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Uzbekistan.

Lucy came to Prepress from a completely different direction. She had a PhD in plant molecular biology and spent nearly a decade as a lecturer. Her mum spotted a small ad in the Courier and suggested she apply. She joined as a publishing assistant, enrolled in an MSc in publishing at the same time, and 20-plus years later is the MD.

We cover:

• What employee ownership actually means for a business — and why it was the right succession option for Prepress
• Brexit: how it wiped out ~15 EU agency contracts overnight, and the creative solution (a Luxembourg partnership with Lexilux) that got them back in
• Trump-era UN funding cuts: what geopolitics does to a small company in Perth with a global client base
• AI and copy editing: not a threat, but potentially a bigger opportunity — because AI-generated text still needs a human to check it
• The Institute of Directors: why becoming a Chartered Director transformed how Lucy approaches her role, and why she recommends it to anyone stepping into a directorship
• Resilience: navigating Brexit, a lost major UK contract, and personal bereavement at the same time
• The Monday Motivation: what Lucy publishes to the team every week
• A meeting in 2026 where a business contact spoke to her male colleague and ignored her entirely — and what happened next

Quote of the episode: "Treat people how you want to be treated yourself." — Lucy Harrier

Playlist song: Human — Rag'n'Bone Man ("It doesn't rev me up, but it gives me peace.")