UCL Astrea Voices: Choosing your journey

UCL Astrea is a network for Women in Professional Services, and the 2018 Astrea Steering Committee includes not one but two members from Library Services. Jennifer Brown, Departmental Administrator, is co-Deputy Chair of the newly formed committee, and Gillian Mackenzie, Deputy Librarian at LaSS (in other words, me) is part of the Communications Management team.

Recently, the committee hosted its first event of 2018 – a lunch-hour session called UCL Astrea Voices: Choosing your journey, which featured two inspiring speakers. The first was Maxine Mackintosh, co-founder of One HealthTech – a community which champions and supports underrepresented groups, particularly women, to be the future leaders in health innovation. She was followed by Rachel Martino, a registered Nutritional Therapist and Unit Manager for the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, who helps organisations and individuals discover the path to optimum health and performance. Both speakers talked about their career paths and shared their valuable experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For me, a particular highlight was Maxine Mackintosh sharing this quote from Clare Marx, the first female president of the Royal College of Surgeons: “We can’t tell people to change their culture, what we have to do is grow the numbers and show the way we can change the culture from within rather than dictating.” This part of Maxine’s presentation felt like a call to action, and reminded me that change is everyone’s responsibility and is something that has to be grown within the organisation.

But don’t just take my word for it (I am a bit biased after all) –  Samantha Baker, Training and Development Officer, also attended the event and had this to say about it:

“Astrea Voices was the first Astrea event I have attended and it did not disappoint!

Maxine delivered an informative (and humorous!) presentation where she told us about her career so far and how she had noticed a very small amount of women at the events she was attending. It was so inspiring to see what Maxine had already achieved and what was next for her, as she continues her PhD work at UCL, working at the intersection of data science and dementia.

Rachel Martino’s presentation was very interesting, it was the story of her career path to date, which was an eclectic mix of studying physics, French and dance.  I particularly enjoyed hearing about Rachel’s journey and how, like many of us, she didn’t know exactly what path she wanted to follow for some time, so she tried as many different things as possible!

During the question and answer session at the end, Maxine gave us the very poignant statistic that if we keep progressing with gender equality (particularly the gender pay gap) at the same rate we have been, it will take 140 years to get there (I believe a recent study calculated this at 217 years!). We discussed that gender equality is so much more than women being paid the same as men for the same job. It’s about creating more opportunities for women to take on higher-paid and higher-skilled roles, and leaders taking risks by putting women in Executive roles, where they are currently under-represented.

I left the event feeling inspired and motivated. Hearing the experiences of my UCL colleagues and the successes they had achieved has encouraged me to identify potential career opportunities, and reflect on my own experiences so far.

To all my female professional services colleagues, I would absolutely recommend you join Astrea. The event was fun, inspiring and very informative. I can’t wait for the next one!”

I’ll be circulating details of upcoming Astrea events on Libnet, but I’d also encourage anyone interested in the group to sign up to the Astrea mailing list, follow us on Twitter, and join us for any (and all) future sessions and networking opportunities. The Astrea group is for all women in professional services and aims to provide sessions to inspire ideas, build confidence and provide functional skills. If you have any comments, ideas or questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch – we would love to hear from you!