How one woman is forging a quite remarkable career path
At first glance Hifsa O’Kelly’s route to partner at a leading Gloucestershire law firm appears pretty straightforward - and then you look at the route she's taken.
Dear reader,
Today we lead on another of our big interview-come-profiles.
When you meet anyone at the top of their profession there can be a tendency, in your less generous moments, to imagine they were either born with a silver spoon in their mouths - as well as bags of talent. Or that they’ve had one of those perfect runways laid out from birth some of us are lucky enough to benefit from.
Hifsa O’Kelly isn’t one of them. She didn’t so much have a runway to take off on so much as a sheer mountain to climb, but she did so with aplomb.
O’Kelly was one of a trio of recent appointments to partner level at law firm Willans.
For those who think the barrier into a profession might just be too much, the rockface too sheer, read on. We’ve not told the whole story here, but you’ll get the gist.
It would be easy to go comparing her choices as a student to those who think it is tough trying to get through university today and how on earth can they handle the financial and work pressures. But some people just break the mould and that’s all there is to it.
It’s also proof that not one ingredient is enough, and if anyone tells you they made it to the top on sheer talent alone they’re probably an exception, or have forgotten what really happened. Neither is it raw determination and intelligence. It also takes some good mentors, brilliant colleagues to support, aspirations and a good businesses to work in, and then some.
Enjoy.
Best regards,
Editor | 07956 926061 | LinkedIn: Andrew Merrell | andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk
Friday:
🎶 Live on the Wye Music Festival 2026 is due to take place at Redbrook Football Field tonight and tomorrow from 6pm to 11.45pm. Yes, we know it’s in Wales, but it’s the Forest of Dean side of the river.
🎶 Summer Charity Ceilidh by Cheltenham Animal Shelter at Tithe Barn, Bishops Cleeve from 7pm to 10.30pm. More here.
Saturday:
🏉 Gloucester Rugby play Newcastle Red Bulls at Kingsholm at 3.15pm.
Sunday:
Cheltenham Science Festival is inviting you to indulge in its catalogue of free events for adults and families from 10am to 2pm in its Festival Village. More here.
🫂🌍💷 Calling all B Corps: Gloucestershire B Local, which is dedicated to supporting B Corp businesses in Gloucestershire, is due to stage a best-practice webinar of general interest on Monday 8 June on local economic development in Gloucestershire. Panellists will include Max Wilkinson MP for Cheltenham, Phil Clement, head of inward investment in the growth and enterprise team at Gloucestershire County Council, Jacqueline Randall of the Cotswold Collective, and Adam Vines of Together Gloucestershire. Due to take place on Monday 8 June from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Register here.
💻 CyNam is also hosting In Machines We Trust? Our summer headline event is on Thursday 11th June, from 6:00 pm at Hub8 MX, Cheltenham. The event will explore how trust is built, tested, and engineered in machine-driven environments, examining autonomy, accountability, and control as AI systems increasingly influence decision-making. Tickets are just £5. Find out more via CyNam’s events page.
🚜 Three Counties Show Landowners, farmers and rural business owners are invited to put their questions directly to a panel of industry experts, including the head of agriculture, land and development at Willans Solicitors LLP, Adam Hale, on Friday 12 June. On Saturday 13 June there will be a rural careers fair from 4pm. And on Sunday 14 June there will be a panel discussion at 10.15am called Farming for Everyone, all about building inclusive, diverse agricultural communities. Willans’ employment law partner Hifsa O’Kelly will be one of the speakers. Then at 1.15pm another Willans’ partner, John Fisher, will take part in this discussion exploring the legal considerations involved in preserving, managing and maximising the value of traditional rural features.
Briefing notes…
🚗🚗🚛🚗🚗🚛🚗🚗People who commute via the A40 Over roundabout near Gloucester can expect their travel time to double from July, and possibly continue for nine months. National Highways is set to invest £7m in essential maintenance of the bridge over the River Severn at Over, which sees around 5,000 vehicles an hour during peak times. The section of road is a key network connecting Gloucester and Cheltenham with the Forest of Dean, Ross and Wales.
💷 Deal: Engineering firm Helipebs Controls has been bought by the Flowtech Group. According to the Gloucestershire business the deal reinforces its position in the fluid power and controls sector and “opens the door to new opportunities for growth, innovation and collaboration”. It gives Helipebs, which is headquartered in Sisson Road, Gloucester, access to an even bigger marketplace and will benefit customers and staff alike, said the firm. The deal was for an undisclosed sum. Helipebs serves sectors including nuclear, green energy, pharmaceutical, defence, subsea oil and gas and mould and tool making.
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How one woman is forging a quite remarkable career path
At first glance Hifsa O’Kelly’s route to partner at one of Gloucestershire’s leading law firms appears pretty straightforward. But then you look at the detail and realise what an incredible journey she’s been on.
By Andrew Merrell.
When we first meet it’s minutes before Hifsa O’Kelly takes to the podium as one of a team of employment law experts from Willans LLP solicitors set to brief a room full of businesspeople at Cheltenham’s Queen’s Hotel about the impact of the Employment Rights Act 2025.
That team, including Jenny Hawrot and Simon Pathé, partners at the firm, and Achante Anson, a trainee solicitor, step up in turn with O’Kelly relaying, among other things, the case study about someone who won three months’ pay for breach of contract at a business he had never even worked for.
It’s a grand setting, and the 70 members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (many are HR experts from businesses across the county) who fill the room are rapt.
O’Kelly leads a debate off the back of each of her case studies, rounding off with a conversation about AI and its impact on the workplace.
“Willans has a really good relationship with the CIPD and these kinds of seminars are a great opportunity for us to let everyone know what they need to be aware of and why,” she explains when we meet a couple of days later for this interview, deftly deflecting my praise for her part in the event.
This time we’re at Willans’ headquarters, not far from The Queen’s Hotel and also overlooking Cheltenham’s magnificent Imperial Gardens.
“I don’t see anything I do as particularly different or special. I just get on with the job and want to deliver an excellent service to my clients. It’s a job I love doing.
“Presenting can be daunting, but relaying the knowledge and experience to the CIPD audience was really rewarding and satisfying to me,” she adds, before quickly moving on to praise her colleagues, Hawrot and Pathé, and how they had managed to convey in simple form such a complex and wide-ranging topic as the 2025 Act.
That respect is mutual, even if you suspect it is yet to sink in entirely for O’Kelly, who was only made partner in April, just a month before we talk.
Hawrot, who is head of employment law and business immigration, called O’Kelly’s promotion “truly deserved” and praised her colleague’s “extensive experience and strong technical ability”.
She was one of a trio of senior promotions that included Emma Thompson and Charlotte Cowdell.
O’Kelly actually originally wanted to become a barrister – perhaps the loftiest of standings for a lawyer, aside from becoming a judge.
But that goal – and how she came within touching distance of achieving it, only to change her mind – isn’t the only fascinating part of her story.
We have to go back a little further to find the beginning of a road that led her from humble beginnings to where she is now, able to confidently advise all manner of organisations, small to medium-sized businesses, schools, colleges, and charities – on all aspects of employment law and business immigration.
She also helps organisations with the day-to-day management of staff and HR matters, represents clients involved in tribunal claims of unfair dismissal, settlement agreements, redundancy, TUPE, discrimination, and whistleblowing and has extensive experience of acting for both claimants and respondents.
Rewind the clock to her childhood and here was someone whose first thoughts of a job had nothing at all to do with law.
“I wasn’t very ambitious,” she said, when I ask whether her drive was apparent pre-GCSE.
“I remember going to a career’s advisor. She said ‘what do you want to do?’
“I really wanted to work in a nursery. I loved children.”
Was there pressure from parents then when it came to career choices? Was that what drove her to choose a profession?
“I didn’t feel there was any pressure, although I knew my parents would prefer if I went into law, medicine or accountancy.
“It was (a career in) medicine I was thinking about for a long time, but I found the pull towards law stronger. I think I have always had a strong sense of fairness and justice.
“I think I always knew I wanted to help people, and I felt I could do that through the law.”
Getting that all important degree in law to begin the journey is hard enough, but the route she felt she had to choose reveals a singular determination, work ethic and talent for multi-tasking far removed from the ‘unambitious’ younger self to mentioned earlier.
“I had to choose carefully where I went for my degree, because I had to self-fund myself through it.
“So, I had to work full-time as I studied. But I was also determined to do the degree in three years still,” she explained.
O’Kelly found a university in South Wales that would accommodate her request and promptly set about compacting a course usually spread over several more years into three while also working a nine-to-five job to pay her way.
“I also bought a house during that time,” she said, laughing at the amount she had put on her plate.
“I felt I was working really hard while studying too. I had a really good job (she did her degree with her manager’s support while she was working for the Welsh Government), but I wanted to get to the end of those three years with something other than a degree to show for it.”
Post-degree, while she was completing her Bar Vocational Course (BVC) to become a barrister, she continued to work - now as an assistant manager at accountancy giant Deloitte’s Cardiff office.
Were her parents also driven by the same zeal, I ask, searching not very imaginatively for a source of her work ethic?
“For my dad, education was always really important. He always told us it would open doors for us. He never went to university. They got married young and had responsibilities.
“I don’t think my mother really wanted me to throw myself into work like I have,” she added, pondering the subject for a moment.
“But they both definitely wanted the best for me and my sisters.”
All chose careers. One of her sisters went on to become a pharmacist and the other a teacher at a secondary school.
What did her mother think when O’Kelly became a partner at Willans, thinking she might have enjoyed the status her daughter had achieved?
“I think she was more concerned how many hours I would be working and whether I was working too hard,” she said, laughing again.
“Perhaps when I got called to the Bar they might have shown that picture of me in the wig and gown to a few of their friends and family, but I don’t think what I do is something they talk about.
“It’s more about whether I am okay and how my family is.”
The wig and gown of her once dream profession didn’t last.
“Whilst applying for pupillage (the final part of your training to become a barrister) I was told that I needed more work experience in law first.”
She went to work for a law firm in Cardiff and began practising employment law. It was, to her surprise, something she loved.
And she met her husband. The couple moved to Bristol to work and she continued to accumulate her knowledge and skills at a law firm in the city, first as an employment litigator and then, after promotion, to first response litigator.
“No two days are the same in employment law; that’s probably why I love it. You have variety in dealing with individuals and businesses alike.
“Some questions are straightforward. You can pick up the phone and deal with it in half an hour. Others are more complicated.
“And whatever it is, we need to make sure we can deliver for clients every time.”
Between Bristol and a move to Cheltenham she also became a parent and is now a working mother of two. I wondered if that had changed the woman once so driven nothing seemed insurmountable.
“I think I only became more certain that I want to do well, to set an example to the children that they should also work hard and that nothing comes easy. It helps that I simply really enjoy what I do,” she said.
“Before I had kids I think I had this impression that they (children) would just slot right into what I was doing and it would be business as usual.”
She pauses to laugh at the absurdity of the idea.
Outside of work she also somehow finds time to run, including the odd marathon. It is, she says, her ‘me-time’.
What is it that drew her to Willans?
“When my husband and I first moved to Cheltenham in 2014 I was sitting in Imperial Gardens with my son.
“I was looking for a law firm and was looking up at Willans (you can see the firm’s offices from the park). I had heard about it. It felt right and had an excellent reputation.
“I remember thinking ‘Willans is the one’, but I also thought ‘I may not be good enough’.
“I happened to go for coffee with Chris (Wills, head of corporate and commercial law), a mutual connection.
“And I ended up meeting Matthew (Clayton – head of governance and risk) as well and got on really well with him too.
“Then I was invited for an interview where I met Jenny (Hawrot) and Bridget (Redmond, the firm’s managing partner) and I was just really impressed.
“I realised that as well as being brilliant at what they did, they were just really nice people. I felt they were people I could work with and it was a place I could be myself.
“I wanted to work for a firm that was collaborative, where the partners worked together and supported one another, which was led by experts but where everyone had the same values and believed in them.
“They were all the things I was looking for – and I knew I’d found them. And then I was lucky enough to get the job,” she added, that characteristic modesty emerging again.
“I can be sitting around the table with everyone who works here (at Willans), and I do still have that pinch me moment where I ask myself, ‘how does a girl from my background achieve this?’. It seems so far away from where I have come from.
“There were lots of times when I thought along the way ‘am I going to make it’ and self-doubt inevitably creeps in. But I feel like that desire to prove myself can be positive.”
Deep down, she admits, she believed if she kept working hard she would make it.
“I’ve had the benefit of working with great people throughout my career and have learned from each experience.
“But I feel like now I’m a partner the hard work doesn’t stop. I am excited for our employment team and about helping our clients.”
Read more: Businesses flock to learn about the biggest change to employment law in years.