Alumni return for National Careers Week

As part of National Careers Week, Alleyn’s students were treated to talks from professionals across a myriad of disciplines to inform and inspire them. Amongst those offering their advice and expertise were Rebecca Allinson (Tulley’s 1989), Saffron Clague (Cribb’s 2008) and Claudia Beith (Tulley’s 2013).

Rebecca is Managing Partner at the Technopolis Group whose work involves research, project management and evaluation in the field of European and UK public policy particularly within Higher Education, Information Society and Enterprise. She gave an absorbing account of her recent work focusing on the interplay of education, research and innovation to Alleyn’s Year 11 and 13 scientists along with detailing her career path and offering the invaluable advice to always be curious and questioning and to appreciate the usefulness of the strong Alleyn’s alumni network.

Saffron Clague (Cribb’s 2008) and Claudia Beith (Tulley’s 2013) gave their talks to Year 10 & Year 12 English and Classics pupils and Year 11 Geographers respectively.

Saffron is currently Senior Communications Partner at The Lego Group and recounted her career journey to her current position. She gave students insight into the joy of working for LEGO with its ethos of fun & play with games mornings, cookery lessons and, of course, plenty of Lego bricks to play with.  Along with watching the Lego 2021 Christmas commercial celebrating the magic and creative potential of children’s imagination, students learned of Lego’s collaboration with Adidas and were also delighted to hear about Saffron meeting Little Mix, One Direction and Thierry Henri in her former advertising & social media positions. It was a useful and intriguing description about career pathways that open up from not just the academic but also extra-curricular interests and experiences; stemming in Saffron’s case from her involvement in student TV, radio and social media.

Claudia now works as a Consulting Analyst at Ogilvy Growth and Innovation. Having chosen Geography, Economics and History at A Level with an AS Level in Biology, she went on to study Geography at Bristol University and gave valuable information about her degree course, the diverse options students could expect to find at University and the huge scope and potential offered within dissertations.

Going on to relay her own professional experiences, she covered the practicalities of her journey and choices, giving interesting and understandable description of her roles, at Channel 4 initially and now at Ogilvy, all of which made compelling listening and was very much appreciated by the students who are all currently considering their choices at A Levels and beyond.

Many thanks to Rebecca, Saffron and Claudia for so generously sharing their stories and knowledge.