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Astrea Voices: Unusual Inspirational Career stories

By Gillian Mackenzie, on 4 June 2018

Astrea Communications Officer, Hannah Legg, talks us through the most recent Astrea event.

The latest of our Astrea Voices series featured Fiona Rose-Clarke (UCL School of Pharmacy) and Denise Mapp (UCL Careers) discussing their career stories to date. From local Council, the Armed Forces, the finance industry, further study and navigating restructures and redundancies, they have amassed a wealth of experience and insight between them. Their honesty and warmth created a really positive and at times, emotional event. Thank you Fiona and Denise for sharing your stories with us!

Fiona Rose-Clarke speaking about her career at Astrea event

First up was Fiona who started her career with British Army (yes, she can operate a machine gun!). The army experience breaks people down and builds them back up again and this resilience training proved useful for Fiona’s surprising next move into the world of financial services. Telling herself “yes I can”, she secured her first of many sales. Redundancy then followed which worked to her advantage and enabled her to turn a passion into a job through the creation of her own holistic therapies business. Fiona’s next move was to UCL and after a couple of role changes, she is now at the School of Pharmacy in the role of Study Abroad and Placements Coordinator.

Denise Mapp speaking about her career at Astrea event

Denise began her career fresh out of college when she applied for a paid internship at Newham Council. This led to 6 years working in events and communications teams. From organising conferences to leading on campaigns, Denise amassed a wealth of interesting experiences. During this time she also began studying for an English degree at Birkbeck. A restructure nudged her to apply for a new job and she started work at UCL, which enabled her to continue her degree in the evenings. Missing working in events and finding the industry difficult to get back into, Denise took an events qualification while volunteering on the side. This certainly paid off when she was asked to manage the book launches for Head of Ted Chris Andreson and Ted Talker Simon Sinek –a real career highlight! Denise now has her dream role in events – she now works in UCL Careers as an Employer Engagement and Events Officer for PhD researchers, where she is currently organising the annual Professional Careers Beyond Academia conference on June 11.

Key advice from the women were to say yes to opportunities, know your worth, be kind, don’t be defined by your job/grade, enjoy the journey, visualise where you want to be, don’t lose you, learn what you can where you currently are as you try to get where you want to be, you are never to old (or too young!) to go for it!

This event is part of the Astrea Voices series that focuses on the unusual, non-linear career paths taken by colleagues here at UCL. Be sure to sign up to our mailing list to be notified of our upcoming events.

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