Celebrating International Women’s Day – Mechel Rees

I am incredibly proud to be the managing director of RAD Magazine, a job I can honestly say I never imagined I would one day have.

For those who don’t know the background of RAD Magazine, it was founded 51 years ago by my dad, who was a radiographer, and our neighbour, who was the editor of a local newspaper. Their master plan was simply to create a local-style newspaper for the imaging community. I was seven when RAD Magazine first began, and I can assure you it held absolutely no interest for me at that age.

In those early years, my dad and his business partner continued with their full-time jobs and worked on the magazine in the evenings. I remember, when I was around 12, overhearing my parents talking and hearing my dad say he was going to give up radiography altogether to concentrate on RAD Magazine full time. And my incredibly supportive mum believed in him wholeheartedly, encouraging him to follow his dream.

Around the same time, I had just started secondary school and discovered I had a bit of a flair for languages. Fast forward a few years, examinations taken and passed, and I went off to Düsseldorf, Germany, for a work placement. It was a fantastic experience that really built my confidence using languages in a business setting.

When I came back to England, I knew I wanted a job where I could use my languages. RAD Magazine was still going strong, but as we had never ventured abroad, working there didn’t seem a natural fit. So, I had a variety of early jobs that all used my languages – importing furniture from East Berlin, distributing swimming pool pumps and selling lubricants.

In 1993, I had my daughter, and for those of you who don’t know, our ‘new girl’ Charlotte is my daughter (although I think after three years we can probably drop the word new).

Juggling work and being a new mum was really difficult, and with the magazine continuing to grow, I asked my dad if there might be a role for me. As it happened, there was a vacancy and he told me to apply. I applied, expecting a nice father-daughter chat, but no. He put me through a proper interview and then gave the job to someone else. Apparently, I wasn’t quite ready for the world of radiography.

Most of the jobs I’d had involved travelling into London, which I didn’t want to do with a young baby, so I took a local job that, luckily, still involved using my languages: importing typewriter ribbons and NCR ribbons.

Fast forward a couple more years and that job wasn’t really ticking my boxes anymore. Over a family Sunday lunch, my dad mentioned that one of the girls at the office was leaving and that maybe, just maybe, it was the right time for me to join RAD Magazine.

So, in November 1999, I started. I literally began at the ground level and learned everything: sending the post, booking meetings, typing letters and faxes (yes, I am that old), making the coffee and eventually being allowed out to exhibitions, following Dad around with my caption book while he took photos.

Working for family isn’t as easy as people think. He was tougher on me than anyone else, and I can honestly say I didn’t always appreciate it at the time.

About 10 years ago, my dad retired and handed over the day-to-day running of the company to me, which was a daunting prospect. Anyone who knows my dad knows I had incredibly big boots to fill. But by that point, I had been in the business for 16 years, and if he believed I was ready, then I was determined to give it everything. Is it easy running a company? No, it’s not. Is it easy running the family company? Definitely not.

We all want to make our parents proud, and this is one thing I am absolutely determined not to fail at. But I am incredibly lucky: I have a brilliant team supporting me – all women – and a fantastic network of women across the industry, many of whom I now consider friends, to share ideas, challenges and experiences with.

And as for the next 50 years, watch this space. There is another woman waiting in the wings, ready to take RAD Magazine to its next level.

Read the full International Women’s Day feature on pages 6 and 7 of the February 2026 issue of RAD Magazine.

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