Having grown up in a small Wiltshire town and attending the local secondary school I graduated from Henley Business School in 2012 with a first class honours degree in Business Management. I proactively deferred the final year of my degree to undertake a six month internship at Zurich and when I returned to complete my final year I successfully achieved a place on Zurich’s Future Leaders graduate programme.
Four six month rotations around Zurich’s life business flew by and enabled me to gain a broad understanding of the large organisation and a great network of colleagues. For the following year I developed my investments knowledge on a funds process improvement project before joining Zurich’s corporate pension team as a Commercial Consultant. In this role I focussed on progressing my technical and operational knowledge before beginning a new challenge in Zurich’s D2C team as a Distribution Manager in July last year.
I thrive from operating in a corporate culture where I can really make a difference to people’s lives – both through my role in insurance and as an individual. I have high standards and put pressure on myself to deliver work I am really proud of, and I place importance on forming relationships with colleagues to drive collaboration and make work enjoyable. I love to get involved in the detail of things but I also have the ability to ‘zoom out’ and view situations broadly and from a variety of perspectives.
I’m passionate about continued development and have sought various learning opportunities outside of my role. I’ve recently become qualified to give retail investment advice through completing the Chartered Insurance Institute’s Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning, which I am immensely proud of.
I have been a member of Zurich’s employee forum since 2013, representing Zurich employees (in general) in legal consultations and during management decisions and policy changes. I was chosen in 2016 to annually represent the UK at Zurich’s European Forum in Switzerland and bring valuable learnings back to the UK.
I have been a member of Zurich Community Trust’s grant committee in Cheltenham for a number of years where I was involved in assessing applications for funding and visiting charities to award small grants.
I represented Zurich at Business in the Community’s careers fair for local secondary schools and I attend my secondary school’s annual STEM careers day to talk about Zurich and, more broadly, increase engagement for the insurance and financial services industry. I currently volunteer as a programme partner for Zurich’s participation in Women Ahead’s 30% Club cross-industry mentoring scheme.
When I’m not at work I enjoy open water swimming, sprint triathlons, good food and wine.