Tom Maidment

MEng Automotive Engineering with Sustainability, 2017

Based in: Coventry

First job:

Undergraduate Engineer, Advanced Product Creation at Jaguar Land Rover

Ambitions for the future:

Save one billion tonnes of CO2 by the time I'm 30.

Describe your current role and what attracted you to it.

I lead the development and implementation of the business environment strategy across operations and supply chain. I was attracted by the impact I could make as Hilton Foods is a large international red meat and fish company with an expansive environmental impact.

What’s your favourite part of the role?

I enjoy the huge variety in my role. I work with government, academia, other businesses, investors, and teams right across the business. No day is like the next.

What are the key skills you learnt at Warwick that have helped you with your career to date?

1) Technical skills - the underlying chemistry/maths, structured thinking, and problem-solving skills I learned during my Engineering degree are still the key that allows me to unlock new challenges.

3) Self-confidence - being given the right amount of autonomy in projects and societies allowed me to explore my own capability and gave me the self-belief to expand my career.

What top tips do you have for Warwick graduates who would like to work in your sector?

Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, but it rarely gets the attention other sectors do. Sustainability in the food sector is fascinating, varied in the topics, but also uniquely combining industrial, energy, and biogenic sources of emissions, while straddling the climate and nature crisis.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My days can vary. I might be talking with the government about regulations, visiting a site to understand a new intervention, engaging competitors on joint research, speaking at a conference on sustainable agriculture, discussing our strategy with an investor, leading an innovation project using AI to measure biodiversity, teaching students in a university about fugitive emissions in fisheries, working on a refrigeration challenge at a site, or engaging with suppliers/customers on their decarbonisation programmes.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given in relation to your career?

In my first job I had terrible imposter syndrome, I said to a colleague “I really don't know what I am doing". He immediately responded, "I've been doing this 38 years, I still don't know what I'm doing. "This gave me reassurance that you're not expected to know everything.

What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were applying for jobs?

I wish I had known that careers evolve. I started as a Sheet Metal Engineer and now I work in sustainability for the meat/fish industries. Remember that you’re not choosing a career you need to stick to for the rest of your life, you’re choosing your next job. It’s easier than you expect to change careers, but equally 40 years in the same sort of role can be fulfilling.