I started my career after my Masters in occupational psychology as an occupational psychologist working for a psychometric consultancy doing research and design of psychometrics.
There I learnt many skills about the work environment, project management and logical and precise analysis, which I was then able to take forward to my next role as lead of psychometric assessment at PwC, working in the recruitment team. PwC gave me a wealth of experience, working within a huge graduate recruiter, leading assessment projects across eastern European offices, coaching on global leadership development programmes, designing transition to partner programmes. I learnt from so many mentors, formal and informal, and from many experiences and challenges. Working with senior partners in the PwC culture is demanding and energising and I learnt lots about myself during that time.
I left after 11 years having done as much as I felt I could. I took a little time out to think and consider my next steps, did some associate work and took a contract. After that time I had a baby and took some time out on maternity leave.
At that point I was contacted by a ex-colleague from my first post-MSc job to join Just Group plc into his team, Talent, Leadership & Learning. It was great to join a team where I was familiar with my manager, with a friendly culture and work that I really enjoyed. I’ve spent 5 years at Just working on first talent and leadership then more recently moving full time into diversity & inclusion work. I’m really passionate about D&I work and love the work I do now, leading on Belonging and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. We’ve achieved a huge amount in the last 4 years, and I’m really proud how we have moved from a low base on diversity to having a much more diverse representation, an inclusive culture and much more employee engagement with our agenda. For a company of our size, we’re forward looking in our efforts – for example working with Progress Together on social mobility, GAIN on neurodiversity, running regular menopause cafes and having in place guidance for gender transitioning at work. There is lots more that we can do and we have big ambitions to expand our agenda.