Sarah Medcraf moved to Moray in 2009 because her boyfriend was in the RAF. She was 18, knew nobody, and had no job. Her plan — to the extent she had one — was: if this doesn't work, I'll just go back to Yorkshire. Reader, it worked.
Fifteen years later, Sarah is the CEO of Moray Chamber of Commerce, a director of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, and one of the most clear-eyed people you'll find on what it takes to lead a region, build a membership, and show up for a business community through a decade of disruptions that nobody planned for.
The job rejection that led to the right job
The route in wasn't glamorous. After her husband Alan — the former RAF boyfriend — was medically discharged following a Crohn's disease diagnosis and set up his own business, Sarah found herself unemployed after Christmas one year and knew the chamber was hiring. She applied for a marketing role. She didn't have marketing experience. She knew that. She applied anyway.
The then-executive director, Marjorie MacLennan, rang her that evening. "You're not right for us, Sarah. You know you're not in that marketing role." Then: "But actually, our ops manager's just handed her notice in, and we think you're a perfect fit." Sarah took the job she hadn't applied for, and spent the next four or five years, in her own words, "digging away and trying to prove why I was there."
The shift happened when she came back from her first maternity leave in 2018. "I went, 'I get it. I know what this region needs. I know what this chamber's supposed to be.'" That clarity — about the mission, about the board she needed, about the partners she had to bring in — led to her promotion to chief executive. She's been evolving the role ever since.
The imposter syndrome nobody talks about
Ask most people about imposter syndrome and they'll tell you it gets better with experience. Sarah disagrees, and her reasoning is worth sitting with.
"When you are in your late teens and early twenties, you're probably a little bit naive and a little bit cocksure of yourself because you didn't know what you didn't know," she told Brenda. "But as you get older and more information comes to you, then the fear factor gets in as well." She uses the example of moving to Moray at 18 — fine, she just got on with it. If someone asked her to relocate now, she'd overthink it to the point of paralysis: crime rates, schools, parking, commute. The knowledge that she didn't have at 18 is exactly what makes it harder now.
Her view on the environment matters too. Too often, women are told to overcome their imposter syndrome, to push past it, to prove themselves. Sarah's point is that it's a two-way street. Yes, women need the tools, the networks, the coaches, and the confidence. And yes, environments need to change as well. "Society needs to change to go, actually, this isn't a male-dominated environment, or 'why are you here, you're too young, you're female, whatever.'" But she's equally clear that waiting for the environment to change isn't a strategy. Act with integrity. Do your job for the right reasons. Let the proof be in the pudding — because it will be.
The pizza boardroom and the I love me folder
Two ideas from this episode that Brenda wrote down in red pen. The first: the pizza boardroom. Sarah and Alan have a group of successful businesspeople in their circle — people who own and run multi-site businesses across the UK — and when Sarah has an idea she wants to pressure-test, she convenes an informal session. Someone's kitchen. Pizza. The kind of rigorous, affectionate, unsentimental feedback that a formal board would give, without the formality. "What's your investment here? Where's the market? Who's the customer?" It's the thinking framework of a boardroom without the structure. Anyone can build one.
The second: the I love me folder. In Sarah's office, when a compliment comes in — a great member review, a message saying the chamber made a difference, a thank-you email — she tells her team to put it in a folder in their inbox called "I love me." "If you've had a bad day or something's really rotten, go look in your I love me folder." She describes it as lifting people a few degrees when they're struggling. It costs nothing. It takes thirty seconds to set up. It works.
Showing up when you don't have the answers
The COVID section of this conversation is worth hearing in full. In the first week of the UK lockdown, Sarah received 78 calls from business owners. Furlough hadn't been announced. No funding had been confirmed. She didn't have answers. What she had was a phone and a willingness to listen.
"I'm going, 'I don't know. But you need to rant to me for 10 minutes to get it off your chest so you don't take this home to your family, so just go.'" That showing up — for members who were frightened, confused, and trying to hold their businesses together — is what she credits for the chamber's membership retention and growth through and after the pandemic. People remember who was there. Not who had the answers, but who picked up the phone.
She also talks about something most leaders don't admit to: the rage she felt during COVID when her sister walked past the end of her mum's garden path in Yorkshire for a chat. Nobody broke any rules. Nobody got close. But Sarah — holding everything together in Moray, separated from her family, trying to show up for 260 businesses — felt anger unlike anything she'd experienced before. She wasn't proud of it. But she tells the story because it's true, and because it's important to say that the people who show up for others in a crisis are also carrying something.
About Sarah Medcraf
Sarah Medcraf is the CEO of Moray Chamber of Commerce, the independent business organisation serving the Moray region of northern Scotland — home to global brands including The Macallan, Baxter's, and Walker's Shortbread. She joined the chamber in 2015, was promoted to chief executive after her first maternity leave, and has since grown its membership to over 260 businesses. She also serves as a director of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, the umbrella organisation for 30 chambers across Scotland.
