I arrived at my current position by an unusual route having left school at sixteen with few academic qualifications. I worked as an Accounts Junior in a fabrication company and experienced a company going down. It was this company that gave me the opportunity to redeem my poor school performance and gave me day release to the college where I later taught. Discovering that I enjoyed learning if under my control I embarked on a full time degree in Business Information Technology, and in my third year took the opportunity to spend 15 months working in China. This gave me an exceptional opportunity to discover my potential at a young age and I ended the year as a successful manager where I lead, managed and trained a thriving team of Chinese staff in the front office of a large five star tourist hotel in Xian. On graduation I took a training job with a publicly funded private training company in the East End of London where alongside a team of four developed a set of NVQ programmes in IT for unemployed adults from ethnic minority backgrounds, with the long-term strategic aim of providing access and employability to a disadvantaged sector of the London community. On discovering I enjoying teaching and was good at it I then qualified to become a Lecturer in Further Education, where I conducted my second teaching practice at a School and University in Budapest, Hungary and on return became a Lecturer in an FE College. Since that time I have worked in two FE Colleges teaching FE and HE where I developed and managed a series of GNVQ / degrees courses and worked with employers to develop their NVQ provision. In my current role as a Senior Lecturer in MIS I wear a number of hats which include my role as Course Director across a number of UG and PG programmes in Business and Management, Dissertation Co-ordinator, Placement Lead, Erasmus and Study Abroad Co-ordinator and organiser of a series of extra-curricular activities across the School to ensure that our students are graduate career ready, with a breadth of experience and can compete against students from traditional universities.
