Profile
Claire Fordyce
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About Me:
I live in Edinburgh with my husband and two children. I work from home as a regulatory affairs consultant.
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
I work for a large scientific consultancy. My expertise is in cosmetics and personal care products (such as make up, shampoo, moisturiser etc.), and my job is to ensure the products sold in shops or online are safe and compliant.
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We have a broad range of scientific expertise in our company but our team is quite small, covering mostly personal care and home fragrance products (such as candles, diffusers etc.). We look at various different regulations in different markets. We have clients who sell products in markets all over the world.
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My Typical Day:
I’m home based, which helps me balance my work life with my childcare. In a typical day I can review 3 or 4 different products (personal care products or home fragrance products). I check ingredients and product packaging.
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My typical day starts at 6.30am – I get up and get my children ready for school (age 6 and 8). I usually start work at 9am, after school starts. I take a break between 2.30 and 4pm to collect my children, and then I work through again until 7pm at night. My hours is very flexible. Working from home is a bit of a double edged sword – its convenient but it can be a bit boring. I’m quite sociable and I miss that interaction.
My work day starts with checking emails. I plan my day based around which work is most urgent, for which clients, and then I get started. I have to record everything I do on a timesheet so that the cost of my time can be billed back to clients.
We are a large scientific consultancy so there can sometimes be opportunities to work on interesting projects, but like many jobs, there is an element of repetitiveness in what I do.
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Education:
I attended a secondary school and 6th form college in the north east of England, before I moved away to Sheffield, and then Edinburgh for university.
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Qualifications:
10 GCSES A*-C
A levels in Chemistry (A), Media Studies (C) and Psychology (B)
Degree in Chemistry with a year in America from the University of Sheffield (First class)
PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh
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Work History:
I briefly worked in a lab as a synthetic organic chemist before I moved into regulatory affairs. My first job was at Boots. Their head office is based in Nottingham so I moved there from Glasgow with my husband. We lived there for 10 years before we moved back to Edinburgh to be close to his family.
I worked at Boots for 9 years and learned so much while I was there. Not just about cosmetic products and their applicable regulations, but also about how a retail business works, how to interact with people in a professional environment, about internal processes, and how different functions work together to achieve the same goal. There is no substitute for hands on experience.
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Current Job:
I left Boots when my husband accepted a new job in Scotland. We relocated and I planned to take some time off to settle the children into school and nursery. Unfortunately this was just before COVID so a short break turned into exactly one year! In a way COVID worked in my favour, as I was able to find many more jobs I could do from home, rather than being restricted to what was available locally.
My company is called Exponent International. Its a US company but the UK offices are in Harrogate and Derby, however, like many others in my team I work remotely. We have a teams call twice a week and chat regularly online. My role is very similar to my last job in terms of the knowledge and experience required, however, as we are a consultant firm, we don’t develop products ourselves, we just check the compliance of products developed by other companies.
Exponent value scientific expertise and always want to develop consultants to broaden or deepen their knowledge. In the last few months I have attended two conferences, and a week long training course in Brussels on cosmetic toxicology. The course was very hard and had an exam at the end, but fortunately I passed so this will allow me to take on more work for our clients.
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Employer:
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
I really had no idea! I had no long term plan actually.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yes, when I was younger, but I turned it around just in time. I wish it had been earlier though.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
Probably something in IT as I like working on computers
Who is your favourite singer or band?
At the moment, Taylor Swift, but I used to be much more cool than that!
What's your favourite food?
Its a total cliché but it has to be chocolate. I just had a week long course in brussels and brought back loads of chocolate.
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1. For my family to always be healthy and happy. 2. To be better at balancing home and work life. 3. To be more decisive.
Tell us a joke.
OK, here's one my son told me yesterday (he's 8). Knock knock (who's there?) Mr Poop (Mr Poop who?) Haha, you just said poo-poo!
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