Oak Wood Secondary School

He was working for BDO as a School Leaver Apprentice,
having gone straight into an apprenticeship following sixth
form at Oak Wood. Now 24, Danny has over 5 years of audit
experience and is now Trainee Chartered Accountant at
Barnes Roffe.
Danny’s journey into audit started when he attended a mock
interview day organised by the school at Pricewaterhouse
Coopers in Year 9. I remember Danny making such a big
impression on one of the partners taking part in his interview,
he offered Danny work experience – and Danny has known
what he wanted to do ever since!

He works as a Laboratory
Manager at the Central Unit for Sequencing and PCR
(CUSP) at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA),
part of the Department for Environment and Rural Af
fairs.
Sujen is a former Oak Wood pupil. After completing his
A levels, he went to Queen Mary University for a year to
study Biomedical Engineering, before switching to the
University of Westminster to study Biochemistry. He
started as an Assistant Scientific Officer at APHA, and
was promoted to Laboratory Section Manager in De
cember 2021.
In his role Sujen has worked on quality assurance for
microsatellite testing, genome sequencing, and PCR
testing for the Bird Flu outbreak in the UK. As a manag
er, he is now involved in recruitment and interviewing of
new staff, which uses a whole new skill set. He’s had a
visit to the US embassy and in March this year had a
visit to his lab by the King!

Jamie left Oak Wood in 2014. He studied Finance & Banking
at Portsmouth University and has worked in numerous roles
across Finance and Sales, including foreign exchange (FX)
broking in London and in sales for Red Bull UK. In his current
role, Jamie works in electric vehicle sales, including to com
panies for their employee benefit packages.
Jamie provided an insight into his role at Octopus, but also
into the wider the electric vehicle and renewable energy sec
tor. There are a number of roles, with almost something for
anyone regardless of what they have studied at sixth form:
engineers, marketers, sales people, admin/HR, analysts,
commercial experts and more. It was an interesting point that
you can get into an industry and involved with technology
without necessarily going into engineering – and if money is
a driver in your career sales can often be higher-earning due
to the commissions available.