Eleanor Mills

Why organisations work with Eleanor Mills

• She has built the most detailed evidence base in the UK on ABC1 women aged 45 to 60, including partnership research with HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and with Accenture on the economic power of women over 45.
• She names a category most boardrooms still treat as a footnote, the “Queenager”, and gives employers and brands a working vocabulary for talent retention, marketing strategy and product design aimed at this group.
• She has 22 years of editorial authority at The Sunday Times, including running the magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, which gives her communications work with senior leaders genuine craft behind it.
• Her book, Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), turns midlife transition into a leadership story about reinvention after redundancy, divorce and caring responsibilities, the same pressures organisations are failing to design around.
• She convenes a 50,000-strong community at Noon, which means her insight is continually refreshed by the audience itself, not drawn from a one-off study.

Biography highlights

• Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Noon (noon.org.uk), launched 8 March 2021.
• Former Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, 1998 to 2020.
• Chair of Women in Journalism, 2013 to 2021.
• Author of Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), a Sunday Times bestseller; co-editor of Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs (2005).
• Recipient of the International Alliance for Women World of Difference Award (2012); editor of the Press Awards Supplement of the Year (2018).
• Research partnerships with HSBC (Fearless and Thriving) and Accenture (The Rise of the Queenager).

Biography

The most economically active female demographic in Britain is also the one most likely to leave senior roles before reaching the top. Women aged 45 to 60 hold disposable income, household decision-making power and decades of operating experience, yet employers and consumer brands consistently underestimate both their commercial weight and their willingness to stay.

This is the gap Eleanor Mills has spent the last five years documenting. After 22 years at Times Newspapers, including running The Sunday Times Magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, she left in March 2020 and founded Noon on International Women’s Day 2021. Noon is now a 50,000-strong community and a research platform, with partnership studies for HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and Accenture on the economic power of women over 45.

Her book Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024) extends that argument into the territory of reinvention. It draws on her own redundancy and the pressures her readers describe: menopause, divorce, empty nests, caring for elderly parents, second careers. The book reframes midlife as a productive stage organisations should design around, not write off.

For a senior buyer, the value is precise. She gives a board the vocabulary, the data and the editorial sharpness to act on a workforce and consumer segment most strategy decks treat as a rounding error.

Key speaking topics

• Women in midlife as a talent and consumer category
• Retention of senior women through menopause and caring years
• Reinvention after redundancy and career disruption
• Marketing and brand strategy for women over 45
• Personal storytelling in leadership communication
• Resilience in transition

Ideal for

• CHROs and talent leaders designing retention strategies for senior women
• CMOs and brand leaders targeting the over-45 female consumer
• Boards reviewing DEI and culture beyond entry and mid-career pipelines
• Leadership programmes for women navigating career and life transitions in their forties and fifties

Audience outcomes

• A working definition of the Queenager category and what makes it commercially distinct
• Specific intervention points where organisations lose senior women, and what changes the curve
• Evidence drawn from named partnership research with HSBC and Accenture, not generic DEI argument
• A reframing of midlife transition as a leadership and reinvention story rather than a wellness theme