When I finished university I was interested in journalism and was lucky enough to secure an internship working for an environmental charity based in Manchester. This was my first experience of the charity sector and although it was primarily a press and communications role, there was an increasingly strong digital element which I quickly realised I enjoyed. From there I was able to get a job working in the marketing team of the Red Cross and, as such a big brand, the doors it opened eventually brought me to London, working for larger charities like Mind and Breast Cancer Care.

 

I was involved in quite a few environmental and humanitarian campaign activities at university and always liked the idea of using my time to make a difference. I also tended to find common ground with people interested in the same things, so the idea of a career amongst similar people felt comfortable and right for me at the time and since. I’ve often thought of working agency side and I have a number of friends who enjoy it, perhaps I’ll make the move one day but for now charities feel like the right place to be, particularly around softball season!

 

When I started in the role, one thing that stood out most prominently was that we tended to create microsites for every campaign or fundraising activity around the organisation and I worried this wasn’t leading to a smooth and unified journey for users interacting with Breast Cancer Care.  As well as the internal cultural shift that made a change in ways of working possible, we also needed a practical alternative for editors creating campaign content within the site’s main navigational structure.

 

Working with a great design agency, we were able to develop a new campaign content type which really met the needs of users and staff and was flexible enough to be easily customised for each individual campaign. This was a great project to work on as it involved a lot of cross team collaboration and it’s been rewarding to see it rolled out successfully since.

 

I like that the sector feels like a community, everyone you work with tends to pop up again at different events or in different roles, which means there’s a real wealth of knowledge and expertise being shared around in order to further the causes we’re each working towards.

 

When I got my first big London charity job at Mind I was, it’s safe to say, terrified. I’d only been there a morning on my first day before I’d racked up 150 emails in my brand new inbox and bumped into Ruby Wax on the way to the bathroom.  It’s to date the most exhilarating job I’ve ever had, and with that, one of the most demanding. It wasn't a single piece of advice, but I owe a lot of my career and my passion for digital to the manager I had there. She was a tough person to please, but that message that I could always do better pushed me to learn more and do more until suddenly I found myself standing in front of a room full of people giving a talk as part of the Guardian’s digital masterclass series. Leaders like that can either make or break you, I like to believe I rose to the challenge!