Only 7% of board level executives around the world have “a direct connection” to disability, according to the 2019 #valuable/ EY study, ‘Disability Confidence: The Business Leadership Imperative’. Of that 7%, one in five do not feel comfortable letting their disability be known.

Ingham was paralysed from the waist down two years ago as the result of a skiing accident in Switzerland. He is confined to a wheelchair for much of his daily life but works out on a home gym that includes a bicycle enabling him to pedal through functional electrical stimulation or electric pulses. Ingham, a long-time marathon runner and a rugby player, also works out several times a week with a personal trainer.

In the UK, Ingham told Recruiter that he was only aware of two business leaders who had shared their disability, himself and former Lloyds Bank CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio, who had spoken publicly of mental health issues. “Are they too frightened or concerned that people will see them as weak or fallible? I don’t know,” Ingham said.

“For me, there was no shame in it, no fear in it. I felt no difference – as far as I’m concerned, you know, woe betide anyone who treats me any differently,” he said.

After his accident when Ingham made it known he would return to running PageGroup, a senior-level industry executive said to him: “ ‘But you’re in a wheelchair now.’ And I said, ‘Iknow’ – in fact, I think I probably said to him, ‘No shit.’ So I was surprised when he said, ‘You won’t get taken seriously.’ I wasn’t going to argue with him, but I just thought, ‘My God, there are people who think that way!’ Possibly the older generation?

“Then there are the youngsters who are managing today in the workforce, who think completely the reverse!”

Not long after the accident, when he was just starting to get out of bed, Ingham made a video on his tablet for the PageGroup workforce to explain what had happened and his prognosis. The video was shared posted on their internal communications channel. “I told them the story [of the accident], and I said, ‘Look, before you get upset or sympathetic or sad for me – don’t. There’s no reason. I’m fine.

“ ‘You know, I’ve done a lot of things on my legs. I’ve run a lot of marathons, I’ve run in all parts of the world, I’ve travelled everywhere, I played rugby. You know, I’ve done a lot of skiing – badly,’ ” he joked. “ ‘But I’ve done a lot on my legs. They’ve taken me a long way, and now they’re having a rest. Th at is life, and I can still lead, I can still communicate, and I’ll still be your leader’.”

The response from Page’s people overwhelmed him. “If you saw the reaction and read the messages I got after sending that video out – it was unbelievable,” Ingham says. “Very motivating, very uplifting, because to them, their leader was overcoming a bigger challenge than they could even conceive – you know, mentally overcoming it as well as physically overcoming it, and that’s what they want.

“If a CEO isn’t brave enough to come out and talk about disability, how can they possibly imagine hiring disabled people into their businesses,” he says, “because they’re already undervaluing or think people will undervalue them as soon as they announce they are disabled.”