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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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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Emily Everett, UCL alumna (English Language & Literature 2008) reports on last week’s Alumni Professional Networking event: How to get a book published.

The short answer? Write a good one. That was best-seller Ken Follett’s first piece of advice, and it was quickly seconded by the rest of the experts on UCL’s all-star publishing panel. But they also seemed to agree that it isn’t always quite that simple – so they shared insider advice on how to bridge that colossal gap between aspirant writer and published author.

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Cakes, elderly care, opinion polling and a popular restaurant chain may at first glance appear entirely unrelated. In fact, they are all extremely successful ventures that were instigated by the entrepreneurial UCL alumni who were on the panel for last Wednesday night’s CASE Circle of Excellence alumni professional networking event. UCL students Ben Wakeham, 3rd year BA Philosophy and Economics and Tom Palmer, 3rd year BSc Economics report on the event.

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