Would it be correct to assume that your current career wasn’t part of your original plans?

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It certainly wasn’t pre-planned! I got good grades at school and was academic so it felt like the expected thing was to go to a good university and do a challenging master’s degree. I studied Civil & Architectural Engineering. I loved the netball experience at university, but the course didn’t excite me at all and so when it came to my second placement year, I decided to bend the rules slightly and joined the team at Bournemouth 7s Festival to try something a little different. It was there that I realised that I loved the buzz of an entrepreneurial environment that was fast paced and where I had creative freedom. I like the speed of working in an entrepreneurial environment. We could make decisions on the spot and go with them rather than a lengthy sign off process. When the time came to go back to complete my masters, I took the somewhat risky decision not to go back. The Bournemouth 7s team had just come up with the idea of creating sportswear brand Viper 10 and I was offered shares as one of the founding directors so I took a leap of faith and stayed with the team. It seemed like a crazy decision to a lot of people but thankfully going with my gut has worked out and I have stayed in entrepreneurial environments since.

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You changed career paths from your university studies. Have you had any specific training, or mentorships, or resources you’ve really leaned into to help with this change in direction?

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I am pretty much self-taught across the board in terms of creative skill set often spending hours of my free time trying things out, failing and trying again but I have also been fortunate to have always had incredible female role models in my working environment including Sophie Christy who is now the Global Commercial Director at iPRO. She is the best professional relationship builder I have come across and so learning from her first hand has been a real privilege.