Profile

My CV

• Education:

  I went to primary and secondary school in south Manchester – one of the those odd parts of the country that still has loads of grammar schools (even though they aren’t the best thing for all students). Primary school was a small Catholic primary school in Sale, followed by a grammar school in Hale Barns.

• Qualifications:

  I did 11 GCSEs at age 16: maths, physics, chemistry, biology, English language, English literature, religious education, geography, history, French and German.

  I then took 5 A-Levels at age 18: maths, physics, chemistry, German and a weird subject called general studies. I then did business studies A-Level a couple of years later as I had a year out in the middle of university whilst recovering from a major operation to fix my legs.

  I had a year out after my A-Levels as part of a scheme called the Year in Industry (https://www.etrust.org.uk/the-year-in-industry) – I totally recommend this if you get the opportunity – it gave me so much more confidence starting university.

  I then did a masters degree in Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University straight after that year out, but had operations on my legs in my first and second years so took a year out between my second and third years to recover fully.

• Work History:

  My first job was a paper round whilst I was at school, delivering newspapers and magazines at weekends. This was in the days before the internet so people relied on buying newspapers to find stuff out!

  I then did an internship at bp in the summer holiday before my final year at university. I got a job offer from them and have spent the last 25 years in different roles at bp (although I’m now about to move to another company for a new adventure).

  I started as an operations support engineer, then became a process development engineering and then a process performance engineer. That covered the first 5 years, and I then moved to try something very different for what I thought would just be a couple of years, but ended up being a 15 year detour! I ran BP’s education and community programmes, and then added on responsibility for BP’s corporate responsibility programmes in the UK and then UK communications.

  I set up and ran some really cool partnerships with organisations like the Science Museum, and developed youth leadership programmes for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

• Current Job:

  My current role has been to create and lead a team carrying out stakeholder engagement for bp’s UK offshore wind business. I hired 3 stakeholder engagement managers to work with local communities for three giant wind farms in the Irish Sea and North Sea, and a communications manager to build and run websites and internal and external communications about the projects.

  I think my favourite part of the job has been to work with fishing communities and ferry companies to figure out how we can build the giant wind farms without having significant impacts on the fishing and the ferry routes across the Irish Sea. This included spending several weeks in the UK ship simulation centre driving computer simulations of the Irish Sea ferries in terrible weather conditions (yes I did get seasick!) to see how we needed to design the wind farms to ensure ferries could operate safely and fishing vessels could access their traditional fishing grounds.

• Employer:

  I’ve worked for the last 25 years for bp (BP plc), and am about to start work at National Grid.