Highcliffe School

Spend time finding your passion. It’s not easy, and you may not be able to discover it organically, but once you do find it, latch on to it and run with it. Working with your passion is a fantastic experience.

I chose computer science after developing my interest in programming during my GCSE computing lessons. I felt very inspired by my teachers and knew that it was something I'd like to pursue further. After completing GCSE and A Level computing courses, I moved onto study the same at university. I made lots of friends there and had an excellent time. University helped me develop my interests, skills, and grow as a person. I push myself to explore and try new things, something that would have terrified me prior to university. But I will still never forget the friendships I made during my time at Highcliffe. I still talk to many of those people daily. My current role involves working on building solutions for the Cisco Webex cloud that help people communicate and collaborate across the world, with features such as Hot Desking and Whiteboarding.

University was a great stepping stone to my career, although a massive part of my degree has to be when I secured an Internship at The Walt Disney Company in London. It was the most incredible experience and from this role I then secured a job post university with the company. For the past 3 years I worked within Disney Theatrical Group working across Europe on the Disney On Ice tours. I was working within the Commercial team driving sales through Marketing and PR - I learnt so much and was able to travel the world. Not many people can say they get paid for talking about Disney Princesses all day! I have to thank Highcliffe School and Sixth Form for giving me the confidence to achieve my dreams. I never imagined working for one of the biggest companies in the world and it definitely wouldn't have been possible without everything I learnt and gained from attending Highcliffe.

I am currently at Garmin, working as an EMEA Social Media Manager. I work across all product releases ranging from sports, wellness to marine and more! I work with influencers, develop social media campaigns to creating launch events. It's an exciting, fast paced role and I absolutely love working with teams across the globe on new releases. Personal fitness has become a massive goal during lockdown so it has been fantastic to work on marketing campaigns to help consumers on their fitness journeys.

After Columbia, I worked at Facebook for a bit before coming back to the UK. I’ve since worked at Sky News, the i Paper, and British GQ. At British GQ - my dream job - I interviewed celebrities, wrote about all the issues that affect men today, reviewed movies and flew around the world. Now I’m a director at a social media agency, where I create campaigns for brands like Audi, Starbucks and the Royal Opera House. Highcliffe taught me something important: to open yourself up to the opportunities the world presents to you, and to take those even when they’re not exactly what you imagined. I’ve found myself in some of the weirdest, most rewarding and interesting places I’ve ever been because sometimes what you want isn’t always what you need. I owe them massively for that

I left Highcliffe in 2010. From there I did a degree at Warwick University. I was arts editor of our paper, did over 50 plays, took a couple of those shows to Edinburgh and London, and generally tired myself out. After university, I earned a place at Columbia Journalism School in New York. New York taught me so much about the lives and experiences of people wildly different from me, and covering culture and the cultures that make it has been the main thrust of my journalistic career.

Since leaving Highcliffe I feel I have naturally grown as a person by going to live on your own at university. From living with strangers in halls to becoming best friends with them, joining societies and meeting people on your course you learn so much by meeting different people. There of course have been challenges, most notably COVID meaning I had to work from home for 6 months during my year in industry and complete my final university year virtually, but it has all been worth it to achieve a first class honours result. I’m really excited to see how my career continues to develop in medical affairs having just completed my first full year in the role. The two things I enjoy most about my role are knowing that I’m contributing to improving the lives of our consumers, and working with colleagues across the globe.

I have always been interested in science. My year in industry at Pfizer in oncology medical affairs was fantastic not only for the experience in a pharmaceutical company but also to show me how many different job roles that are related to science are out there whether that be sales, marketing, regulatory or health and value. I had always planned on going to university, intending originally to also complete a master's however, I was lucky to enough to secure an entry level position at J&J in the regional medical affairs team after finishing my degree.

As well as being a student I am a police officer and work full time with allocated protected learning time. I have made lots of new friends during my initial training and will meet a lot more people over the next few years on the various further training courses I will undertake. My advice is…just do it! Take every opportunity that comes your way. I never thought I would be where I am at the age of 19 but I only got here by trying and taking a risk.

Following a gap year, I joined Hampshire police and was sworn in as a police constable. I applied thinking I was too young and would not get in, but I did! I have since been out on the streets whilst returning for further training throughout the year. Even though I am completing a degree it is a completely different experience to normal university.