What is your current role and what does a typical week look like?

My current role is Executive Assistant to the Head of School and School Services Office Manager. Quite simply there is no typical week albeit there are cycles of annual events, regular committee meetings and cyclical mini projects, senior academic recruitment campaigns that I organise. I think this is what I love about my job so much; there is so much variety. Miriam and I liaise most days; as we have worked together for 2½ years now, we progress things intuitively but take the opportunity to improve things and take on board suggestions where we can.

As my role includes working with a great team supporting reception, school support and technical admin, together with an EDI slant as co-lead of the disabilities taskforce committee and disability co-ordinator, I meet many different colleagues every week and lead and administer many different pieces of work related to these support functions.

Nationality: British

Who would you say is your role model in your personal and/or professional life?

My instinct is to say my role model is Paddington; he’s polite, caring, has a sense of humour and is resilient (often getting into scrapes but having the intelligence and/or care of those around him to overcome these!). However, I will opt for my Dad. Whilst being brought up in Dunstable by his caring and loving parents, they felt he had set ideas ‘above his station’ in being determined to become an architect. He had glandular fever as a child in the 1940s and had some catching up to do educationally, but through his own determination, cycling to college in the evening to get his apprenticeship, before getting a first class honours degree in Architecture, he got his first job as a trainee architect in Coventry, aged 28. He remained in the same practice, becoming a partner, until he retired 35 years later in 1999. Dad had high standards, believed you worked hard to earn your ‘play’ but was kind, thoughtful, supportive and wanted only the best for his family. One of my Dad’s favourite things to do was to take my Mum clothes shopping – most weekends – he’d enjoy picking out items with my Mum. Quite unusual for Dads to do this from what my friends say. My Mum loved it! Who wouldn’t?

How has your education or roles previous to joining Life Sciences, informed your interests, and why did you choose this career direction?

I left school aged 18 with A-levels and thought I wanted a career in banking. A year later, having hated the last 12 months, I left my banking job and obtained a higher diploma in administrative procedures. Not particularly grand, but it was a stepping stone to my career, whereby I could touch type, do shorthand and as I had undertaken business modules as part of the diploma, it was the ‘personnel’ ones that got me hooked. As a result, I got a job in manufacturing as a personnel assistant and obtained my Diploma in personnel management (CIPD) 2 years later having studied at Coventry University, 2 evenings per week, aged 22. I remained in HR for 30 years and progressed to undertake senior leadership roles. Deep down, I think I will always have a brain that thinks in HR mode, but in 2022, I decided I would like a change and a better work/life balance. Joining SLS has been one of the best things I have done. I love the collaboration and think I’m enjoying the happiest days of my working life.

What are your main interests or passions, outside of work?

To answer this question, I will tell you about my ideal day. This would entail enjoying a cup of tea first thing, catching up on emails and WhatsApps from family and friends, doing Wordle! Followed by a long morning stint doing some gardening. Then off for a walk with my husband, making sure we get an additional 10,000 steps in. By this point we would have deserved a pint at a pub on the way home and then I would get home to having prepared most of a meal the day before. I love cooking but like to plan ahead! We would then have our daughter, aged 29, and our son, aged 25, hopefully with their partners, for a meal or local friends or my husband’s Mum and my Mum round – or event better all of them! We would have a lovely sociable late afternoon into the evening – ideally with a game of 6 Nations Rugby on the TV to shout at! If this wasn’t in my schedule, my favourite place would be on the beach in North Cornwall. Having lived in Coventry all my life, as much as I love my City, my happy place is on the beach getting ready to go for a swim in the very cold Cornish sea!

Interview date February 2025

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