Attendees of the Astrea conference 2014

UCL Astrea held its inaugural conference on Tuesday 2 December – a day of celebration and support for professional services women in the higher education sector and beyond.

‘Culture Shift 50:50’ was a lively and engaging day packed with talks, activities and networking hosted at the prestigious British Library Conference Centre with more than 200 women from UCL, and other institutions, in attendance.

The Astrea network was founded only a year or so ago by Alice Chilver and Emma Todd, two colleagues in The Bartlett, UCL’s faculty of the built environment. Noticing that there was a gap in the ready availability of support and networking for UCL professional services women, Astrea has been established to:

“…empower women.  And by doing so, to get women to realise their potential. We plan to do this by building a network where women can learn from each other; where our members can find mentors and role models; where they can talk about issues of common concern and where we can discuss what needs to change to reach 50/50 leadership.” (‘Our aims’, Astrea website).

The conference follows on from a year of successful events, many of which focused on key topics that Astrea has identified – career development, resilience, networking techniques – and for which there clearly is an appetite to explore further.

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  Rosie Simm, CASE Graduate Trainee, UCL Development and Alumni Relations Office

This UCL professional networking event on 19 February was the second that I have been to and I was unsurprised to find it as well-attended as the previous one.

Among the audience were several family groups, where two generations of UCL alumni had come along to seek advice before launching their first family enterprise.

The panellist’s backgrounds were varied: while Michael Doyle, CEO of the Alacrity Foundation, and Christian Nentwich, founder and CEO of Model Two Zero Ltd, had studied computer science at UCL, Sanchita Saha, CEO and founder of Citysocializer, and Nageela Yusuf, founder and MD of Cerebriam, had studied maths and archaeology respectively.

This was encouraging to see for those of us in the audience with a more limited grasp of the digital world (more…)

Panel chair Pete Digger (UCL English 1994) at
the PR & Marketing Professional Networking event.

Written by UCL alumna Emily Everett (English Language & Literature 2008).

The name of the game at UCL’s award-winning Professional Networking series of events is clearly networking itself. Alums come to listen, ask questions, and then discuss and mix with the panellists and other attendees.

Networking was certainly the buzzword of the night at UCL’s eleventh Alumni Professional Networking event, “Promote Yourself: How to build your PR and Marketing connections”.

Welcomed by panel chair Pete Digger (UCL English 1994), the four panellists represented a range of positions and roles across the field of PR, marketing, and advertising.

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Emily Everett, UCL Alumna (English Language & Literature 2008)

At a time when jobs are scarce and young professionals often disgruntled, a foot in the door can seem more like a leg up into that unattainable world of satisfying employment.

It’s why I’m never surprised to see each of UCL’s award-winning professional networking events so well attended; the opportunity to scribble down some sage advice while adding to your industry contacts is too good to pass up when the job market is so competitive.

Refreshing optimism
Wednesday’s panel on environmental careers stood out to me because of its surprising optimism – the result of a professional field that is still growing and expanding, instead of stagnating like many others.

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