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.