National Careers Week Talks

As part of National Careers Week, which ran from Monday 2nd March to Friday 6th March, students from Years 10 to 13 were given the fantastic opportunity to listen to a series of lunchtime talks from alumni speakers in a broad range of industries. Throughout the week, the talks were packed, with the library almost full every time. 

The alumni speakers were, in chronological order:

• Dr Henry Anning, Royal Veterinary College, speaking about Veterinary Medicine
• Ben Bridge, EVP Head of Global Business at Airbus Defence and Space; Chairman Airbus Defence and Space UK
• Ryan Westmacott, COO and Global Head of Change Management at Goldman Sachs
• Anthony Kolodynski, Regional VP, EMEA at Weights & Biases, speaking about AI Development 

Personally, I attended Ben Bridge's talk on Tuesday. Over the course of an hour, he captured my attention with thrilling stories from his varied career, including experience as a trainee in the Royal Navy, to becoming an assistant in the British Embassy in Kuwait, culminating in his current position managing both Airbus Defence and the wider Airbus corporation's global sales. He also provided us with three main lessons, one of which I found to be one of the most interesting parts of the speech.

First: try your absolute hardest at any task. Ben was determined from a young child to join the Navy, remained set on this goal through his education and gap year in Hong Kong, and strived to do his best to impress even through unassessed periods in his military training. This mad him really stand out from the rest of his fellow cadets when it came to later opportunities.

Second, to learn a foreign language. Whilst working the naval equivalent of an office job, he spoke to someone from the UK's Special Forces about furthering his career, and ended up learning Arabic. Learning this language totally changed the course of his career as he moved from a naval cadet to a role with the Foreign Office, and from there, the contacts he made helped him to move to a director role in BAE Systems leading later to his job in Airbus, a role which interfaced with many of the Foreign Office positions he had fulfilled earlier in his life. 

Third, do not overly fixate on one goal at the expense of others. Throughout his entire career, he had been willing to change. Even for a goal he had cherished throughout his childhood (to be a naval helicopter pilot), he was willing to consider other avenues when new opportunities arose. 

These were some of the many highlights of his talk. It was a really engaging event - the variety of talks available allowed you to attend only those that captured your imagination, which made it much more interesting than other career webinars I have attended!

Thank you to senior prefects Jordan and Rory, Mrs Watson and Ms Ashton who organised the events, to Ben Bridge for his excellent speech, and to all the other speakers for their talks!

Writing: Benjamin (Year 10)

Editing: Eshwar (Year 12)