26 May 2022
Miss Jamie Gallagher, Head of Higher Education & Careers
The latest event in our careers panel series on Tuesday 24 May was entitled “Women in Business” and our alumnae speakers fitted the bill perfectly. Students, parents and staff heard from Charlotte McDougall (2001), Head of Internal Audit at Ascential, a specialist information, data and analytics company that enables smart decision making for business; Zina Hunt (1994), Head of Marketing for the Environmental, Social & Governance Strategy at PwC; Anouska Naran (1994) who oversees the Human Capital Management function across Europe and India at Tishman Speyer; and Henrietta Wells (2002) who works for global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, with responsibility for ensuring compliance with sanctions across the firm's more than twenty offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
As well as talking about extra-curricular passions ignited at Woldingham, our four speakers shared their thoughts on skills that are essential to being successful in the business world, which included ‘being openminded, empathetic and able to build excellent relationships and networks’. They discussed ways of increasing exposure to senior management and making the most of opportunities that come your way.
Our panellists were generally agreed that, at times, they had ended up in positions they had not expected but following paths they enjoyed and being unafraid to learn new skills had worked out well for them. A key piece of advice for students was to remember that ‘careers are often not linear and definitely not a life sentence, so re-train, develop, be open to change and you will succeed’.