What year did you graduate?
2014
What course did you study?
MBBS Medicine.
What is your current role?
I am the Strategy and Operations Manager for a tech start-up in London
How did you get into your current role?
After briefly practicing as a junior doctor, I started exploring careers outside of medicine. I initially spent three years in management consulting to gain some broad business experience. My work took me across the UK working with executive teams of health, social and community providers, advising on strategy and operational transformation. Following
that I became interested in how technology can be used to transform healthcare at a system level. This prompted my move to work with tech start-ups and I haven’t looked back.
Can you describe a typical day?
The nature of working for a tech start-up means, that you are always juggling many roles, however at its core my role involves:
-
growing the customer base globally
-
making sure our business operations serve its purpose for our customers.
On the growth side, my objectives would look like: delivering a new marketing campaign, working with our team to develop new creative assets, actively search for and bringing in new strategic partnerships for the business.
Operationally, I would provide support to our customer service teams to make sure they have everything they need to add value for our customers, and work with our distributors so that our products get to our customers efficiently.
What do you enjoy about your role?
The best thing about working in a small team is the general camaraderie. The constant challenge of creating a great product and growing a business with limited resources, breeds fellowship. Every person wants to be there, and I enjoy spending time with my colleagues, who I now see as a part of my family. This is by far the biggest contrast to a working environment I have seen previously.
I am also big on learning, so I enjoy the wide variety of business tasks I get involved in each day. There are plenty of learning opportunities to grow.
What do you find challenging in your current role?
The difficulty of working for a start-up is that you need to be self-driven to get things done. On occasion, you can question whether an easy day would be better. I found myself at times driving myself to the ground with tasks. The important thing here is to understand when you feel your energy is about to drain and take the time out to zone out and unwind.
What advice would you give to a current student at St George’s who is keen to get in to a
similar area of work as you?
With St George’s being a specialist health university, you can very easily feel pigeonholed to careers within the NHS. However, this is certainly not the case. It’s important to firstly find out exactly what you want to do and the kind of impact you want to have. Once you have done that, really think hard about the skills you have gained during the programme.
There are so many ways to get involved in tech. I approached it from a business perspective. However, I know many grads and healthcare professionals who have studied healthcare specific degrees who bring their expertise and experience to health tech firms to help them with product development.
My first port of call for breaking into any area of work is to reach out to Alumni. They can be an excellent resource for advice or even potential experience.
Which aspects of your degree are relevant for your current role?
The most important skills in tech are effective communication and teamwork. I still can’t believe I had actual workshops on the best way to communicate and how to work as a team. Indeed, these are critical skills for healthcare professionals, but not regularly taught in non-healthcare degrees.
What would you say were the best / most challenging things about your degree?
In my first couple of years, I always looked forward to the clinical skills workshops and anatomy classes. I enjoyed the small group learning. The most challenging times involved the revision periods leading up to the exams, knowing
there was so much content to cover within a short period.
If you could go back to your time at St George’s, would you do anything differently?
Nope, I would do everything exactly the same.
Do you have any advice or a message for current students at St George’s?
Get involved! There are so many opportunities outside of your degree programme, whether it is sports clubs, shows, or volunteering. I realised some of the greatest lessons and best relationships were built during these times. Trying to balance multiple things, is a real testimonial to life itself.
Do you have any advice or a message for students considering studying at St George’s?
If you know that you are interested in healthcare and want to have that tight community feel where you don’t feel like “just a number” then join St George’s. But make the most of every opportunity that comes your way and don’t be afraid to create your own opportunities.