Inspiring Alumni | 15
The most difficult part of my career journey was getting my first job after graduation , so instead of doing that I went skiing in Canada for a year and did a Masters degree back in the UK . Alongside my Masters I volunteered in an election campaign which led to a job at the Welsh Parliament assisting a politician . Thankfully this gave me the transferable skills to work in sustainability on a project to introduce a recycling scheme to Thurrock in Essex . Further local government waste management roles followed in central London where I met my Danish girlfriend . We then decided to emigrate to Denmark where I went to language school before securing a job with LEGO .
For the last six months I have been working for The LEGO Group at its headquarters in Denmark . My job is to formulate our approach to waste in the numerous countries that we operate in . The children who write to us are very keen that we reduce our environmental impact ! The LEGO Group exists to inspire children through play . It was founded in 1932 by carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen , and based on the iconic LEGO brick , it is one of the world ’ s leading manufacturers of play materials .
I found Keele to be an inspirational environment to study sustainability because of the surroundings and the opportunities it gave me to travel . Before I arrived at Keele I had never even been on an aeroplane , but by the end I had visited Kenya on a human geography field trip and spent a semester at the University of British Columbia in Canada . This sparked a real passion for travelling and I have since gone on to live in the Canadian Rockies , Beijing and Denmark where I have now lived for four years .
I also made some lifelong friends who I have been on holiday with virtually every year since graduating . While a lot of us congregated in London for a time we are now spread out all over Northern Europe .
I would say that the most important thing Keele did was to widen my perspective through its teaching and the studying abroad I did . It really helped that my degree was incredibly diverse . I learnt about how volcanoes worked as well as waste management law and geographic information systems .