Tag Archives: careers

Pioneer students talk lean business with successful bootstrapped entrepreneurs

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Birkbeck’s aspiring entrepreneurs attended the third event in this year’s Pioneer programme, to learn how to grow a business with minimal resources from those who’ve done it.

On Saturday 12 January, Birkbeck’s Pioneer programme continued with over 120 students attending a morning of interactive talks from two successful entrepreneurs on lean business. Having gained tips and advice around innovation and ideation in session one, followed by different types of entrepreneurship in session two, students started to get actions in place to move their business ideas forward.

First up, Carlos Saba, Co-Founder of The Happy Start-up School took students on a journey to finding purpose in their business ideas, after a quick meditation session to get us all focused. Mindfulness and happiness are two areas that weaved their way throughout Carlos’ talk and it was clear that students related to this approach when thinking of their business ventures ahead of them.

Students were set a challenge to think about their ‘Happy Value Statement’, a tool included in the organisation’s Stop Dreaming Start Doing e-course, which is about “communicating what you do in the terms of solving people’s problems or making their lives better.” Carlos reiterated the importance of being more customer focused to help students get a clearer idea of the real value they are offering.

Part two of the session welcomed Julie Creffield, Founder of global fitness movement Too Fat to Run and award-winning blogger, author and life coach, to share her start-up story in successfully bootstrapping her business. Julie’s session provided a great follow on from Carlos, giving students practical examples and advice on getting their business started and beyond with minimal resources.

The big message of the day was to Think Bigger; aiming higher than you initially thought of and setting the bar beyond what you think is possible. Julie works with organisations globally to think bigger, behave better and make more of an impact and this message spurred students to take action after the workshop, ready to push forward with their ventures.

The Pioneer programme, in partnership with Santander Universities, takes students on a journey to develop their business ideas and their entrepreneurial skills. The monthly workshops continue in February with a hands-on pitching workshop.

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Newham Young People’s Careers Fair

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Hester Gartrell, Outreach and Widening Access Senior Officer at Birkbeck, discusses the recent careers fair at our Stratford campus for Newham residents aged 16-24.

On Wednesday 29 August, Birkbeck’s Stratford campus hosted Newham Young People’s Careers Fair. The fair which was delivered in partnership with Workplace, Newham’s job brokerage, provided support, advice and guidance about education, employment and training for young people aged 16-24.

The event is the result of an ongoing partnership between Birkbeck Access and Engagement and Workplace and was a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase our campus to Newham residents. A key part of our access work is to demonstrate to potential students that Birkbeck is a welcoming place which will support them throughout their studies. Opening up our doors to what can seem a daunting and gated space is essential to this.

The fair also gave us the chance to speak to local residents about Birkbeck and its flexible study options right in the heart of Newham as well as being a culmination to the work that we’ve been doing throughout the borough this summer. This has included joining Workplace on their roadshow across Newham, holding regular information and advice drop-ins at local libraries and attending community festivals.

In addition to hosting 179 Newham residents, we also had 30 organisations exhibit at the fair from sectors as varied as construction, television and further education. Not only did the event allow us to build links with these businesses, it again allowed us to show others our campus where they may want to host their own events or where they or their colleagues may want to consider studying.

We’re looking forward to hosting more Access and Engagement events and activities on campus in autumn and beyond with plans for our own events and further partnership working.

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Future Focus workshops: careers and employability

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With the new academic year well underway, the first Future Focus workshop was held at the Bloomsbury campus this month, as part of a series of five workshops that support mature learners with advice and guidance on career prospects.

It’s the start of the new academic year and our very own version of the ‘New Year, New Me’ mantra dawns on Birkbeck; a chance for us to contemplate our goals and the tangible steps we need to take in order to get there. Deciding those next steps can always be made a little clearer with the support and guidance of others and attending Future Focus, a workshop organised by Birkbeck’s Widening Access team and designed and delivered by the Careers and Employability team, is a great place to turn to for that.

The first Future Focus workshop of the academic year took place in early October. Delivered by Birkbeck’s Employability Consultant & Events Manager, Alex Jones, attendees were encouraged to use the time to reflect on their motivation, decisions and skills, and whether the next step they were about to embark on fed into these goals. In our busy lives, taking the time to consider and plan, is all too often swept under the carpet, pushed for another day.

By coming along to Future Focus, attendees gave themselves the headspace to contemplate, make informed choices and seek the motivation and confidence to take those exciting first steps.

One of last year’s Future Focus participants, Ana de Monchaux, talks about her experience of attending the workshop:

“My son was applying to university and in the process for this I had got on the Eventbrite mailing list. One of the events promoted was a Future Focus workshop at Birkbeck University. I had been toying with the idea of going to university to study history but I was unsure whether I was too old and would not fit in. I had done a couple of modules with the Open University but had found the lack of face to face time quite isolating, so I didn’t want to feel isolated in a room of younger people.

I had heard really good things about Birkbeck so the Future Focus workshop seemed the ideal opportunity to test the waters! The workshop looked at what kind of career you could get with a degree in your chosen subject. If you just wanted to study for study sake that was okay but it gave you an idea of what you could do.

Everyone was very welcoming and the demographic was varied, I did not feel the oldest one there. Some people wanted a career change, some wanted to enhance and progress in their chosen career and some just wanted to study a new subject. We were asked what we liked about our present job, if we were working, and what we didn’t like. It made me realised that it was interacting with people that I liked the most and being self-employed I liked the least. It also made me see that I could change my career if that is what I wanted to do.

What the Future Focus workshop did, was to give me the confidence that I was not too old and that I had something to offer and that I could go to University. I applied and got in!”

If you’re thinking about your future and the tools you need to get there, sign up to the next session!

If you have any questions or want to find out more, contact the team.

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STEMing the flow – How can we keep women in STEM subjects?

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This post was contributed by Lucy Tallentire, from Birkbeck’s School of Business, Economics and Informatics

stemming-the-flowMuch has been done in recent years to foster girls’ confidence in their abilities in Mathematics and Science, and go for a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). While 33% of the undergraduate course intake across these subjects in the UK is now female, the statistics on retention of female academics in STEM subjects are still far from indicating an even playing field. So does a career in STEM pose specific challenges for women? And what are the challenges when building a STEM career in the university sector?

These questions were among those discussed by guest speaker Professor Ursula Martin, CBE, who joined the Birkbeck TRIGGER team last week to discuss how female academics in STEM can navigate the challenges of a male-dominated sector. The event took the form of a conversation between Professor Martin, of the University of Oxford, and Dr Maitrei Kohli, who recently completed her PhD in the Departments of Computer Science & Information Systems and Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck.

Unconscious Biases

It was quickly agreed that, while a recent surge in opportunities for girls to engage with coding and science is certainly influential, a major responsibility to get more girls into STEM starts at home. Parents and early age role models are more likely to have a restrictive influence on aspiration if they impose social gender stereotypes on toys and activities – Lego and sport versus dolls and dancing. A key thing to consider is the parallels between these stereotypes and the STEM industries; there is an inherent need to first recognise unconscious biases in order to try to avoid them, and that needs to start at an early age.

Both Professor Ursula Martin and Dr Matrei Kohli had parents who encouraged them to develop their own interests. Dr Kohli, originally from India, went to a school which offered computing alongside other extra-curricular options such as music and dance. With parental support, she learned about computer science through basic exercises and play, and never saw herself as different to her male classmates. By contrast, Professor Martin had no access to science outside of her prescribed schooling:

“I went to a school where maths and physics were taught poorly. But before we took our GCSE equivalent exams, we got a new, much younger teacher who was an inspiration to many of us. There is certainly something to be said for motivating the next generation from a young age – you can’t re-educate girls of 13 to like a subject they have been put off from age three!”

The need for change

The low number of female professors of Computer Science in the UK begins with the low numbers of women studying the subject at university – less than 20%. However, while more and more girls are starting degrees in STEM subjects, women are still under-represented at professorial levels in all STEM disciplines, typically at 17%. This varies between disciplines and in computer science the current average is just 10%. This demonstrates a need for changes in universities so as to encourage more women to embark on and progress with a career in academia:

“There are a lot of different incentives for women to work in higher education, but more changes need to be made. For example, if a university board requires a female professorial representative, that woman is chosen from a much smaller pool of professors and adds an extra burden to their workload. This bias is also present at conferences and events, where women are not as well represented – but surely we should be encouraging careful work on a few very good papers rather than working frantically to present something new.”

After an insightful conversation, Professor Martin was asked what advice she would offer to the female researchers and PhD students in STEM, hoping to progress in their academic careers. Her answer: passion, hard work and confidence.

“There are challenges to every work-life balance and the important thing is to adjust, and make room for your passion and curiosity. There could not be a more interesting field – try to think of an area of work devoid of computers. Do not be put off by gloomy statistics; research in STEM is to be cherished as an interesting endeavour, and we must do more to promote it as an equal opportunity wherever and to whomever we can.”

Further information:

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