“The Wellcome
Sanger Institute is
an extraordinary
place to work”
Last issue, our Profile focused on Jo Jones, Executive PA Awards winner
of the UK PA of the Year category – this time we’re finding why her boss,
Professor Sir Mike Stratton, director at the Wellcome Sanger Institute,
secured the Executive PA Awards UK Boss of the Year accolade
Tell us a little about yourself – and your accolades…
My primary research interests have been in the genetics
of cancer and my early research focused on inherited
susceptibility.
In 2013 I was recognised in the Queen’s birthday honours
as I successfully mapped and identified the major high-risk
breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and, subsequently,
a series of moderate-risk breast cancer and other cancer
susceptibility genes.
Then, Jo nominated me for Boss of the Year – she was
so confident I was going to win that she cleared a space
on my shelf for the award before we’d even gone to the
ceremony. That night the whole team were involved and
very supportive – we had a wonderful evening, topped off,
of course, with me winning. The award now sits proudly in
the centre of my shelf.
whole team is allocated a course to prepare and bring but I’m
usually responsible for the main course. It’s a lovely way to
round off Sanger Day and enjoy a few well-earned glasses of
wine with the team.
What other ways do you show appreciation for staff?
Each year I give staff the afternoon off to sit back and enjoy
the Sanger summer barbecue. Various garden games,
including football and frisbee, are played and the highlight
is the raffle, with lots of great prizes donated from suppliers
– this can range from the coveted Sanger branded bag to an
iMAC. I also provide some treats for the team after my family
holiday, and at Christmas time. There are perks and benefits
too – a pension scheme, private healthcare, life assurance,
childcare vouchers, a children’s summer holiday club,
What makes your company different?
The Wellcome Sanger Institute is an extraordinary place to
work. The science that our guys produce makes me feel very
privileged to be here and to play a small part in it.
What is the working environment like at Sanger?
Our environment is quite unique – based on a massive
parkland site, you really have everything at your disposal.
As well as the important laboratories, we have a number of
cafes, a restaurant, a dry cleaner, an ATM, a gym, showers,
changing rooms and bedrooms.
We’re also very proud of the man-made wetlands nature
reserve, which is an area of natural beauty; hosting a diverse
range of flora and fauna and managed by staff volunteers.
Tell us about Sanger Day…
Sanger Day is an event for the whole Institute where I reflect
on the year gone by and the team gets to hear from various
members of the organisation about a particular project or
piece of science they’ve been working on.
Then everyone comes back to my house for food – the
20 Chief of Staff | April/May 2018
About Wellcome Sanger Institute
The Sanger Institute works on genomics (the study of DNA, genes and
their functions) and is one of the premier centres of genomic discovery
and understanding in the world. The team uses clever technologies to
advance understanding of the biology of humans and pathogens to
improve human health – through sequencing, analysing and interpreting
DNA, they’re beginning to transform how human health and wellbeing
is understood. It took ten years of international collaboration to read
the first human genome and 30 per cent of this was done at the
Sanger Institute. Now, the team can read 417 genomes every day. Each
human genome is three billion letters of DNA code, so Sanger has truly
immense amounts of data in its 1,000 square metre data centre.