Tell us a little bit about your background…

I grew up around alpacas and cattle on a remote farm in Totnes, a small town in the South West of England, with my father. We always lived below the poverty line, but when I reached my teens finances became particularly tricky. One day my father had to sell the cottage and the farm, and we moved onto our pet project – a boat which we had spent the last year and a half fixing up.  So that’s where we live now, on a sailing yacht in Plymouth.

Life on the boat is wonderful; when I go to bed I can see the stars through the porthole and hear the waves lapping against the hull. However, it did mean that it took me three hours to get to and from school each day. I became adamant that I should make the most of every minute at school, studying the International Baccalaureate and getting very involved in building our student government.

How did you hear about the US Programme and what were your experiences on it?

I heard about the US Programme when I went to a US college fair in London.  It was my first ever solo trip to London. It was an incredibly exciting prospect for me, but when I arrived I realised I was a year younger than all the other students! At the time I didn’t have a clue about the American education system. I spent the day asking questions and in the afternoon I heard a panel which explained that being low income and first generation in your family meant you were eligible for the US Programme. I started looking into it in earnest from there.

I applied the next year and after taking part in the programme I got hooked on the US liberal arts system, studying abroad and learning exactly what I wanted when I wanted.  My very best memories of the programme, however, are actually from the two years I spent as a team leader. I found the prospect of herding 150 pupils around a foreign country that I barely knew challenging but exhilarating.

How was your experience at Harvard?

After the programme I was offered a full faculty scholarship by Harvard, which was an opportunity I leapt at. What has shaped me and made me want to make a difference wasn’t one single class, but the extracurriculars that I did, the projects I took part in, and the people I’ve met.  The project I have spent the most time on is the FYRE programme, of which I was the founding co-chair. FYRE is a Harvard orientation programme which brings together 100 freshmen from low income, first generation backgrounds (like myself) and supports them to make the most of their Harvard experience. The programme helps acclimatise students who might not feel like they fit in at a 400-year-old elite institution.

Besides building cultural capital for disadvantaged communities, I also adored teaching.  I was the only student who taught at more than 3 schools within Harvard. After taking a class in computer science and falling in love with it, I went on to teach the subject at the college, the law school, the business school and even to local high schoolers. In another teaching first, I was the first student to design and teach their own Harvard undergraduate class. It was in science communication. My motivation for developing this class was the fact that we train some of the world’s best physicists but they can’t explain why their work is valuable, we train some of the world’s most important doctors but they can’t communicate with their patients, and we train leading climate scientists but they can’t explain how we can avert a catastrophe. We need to change that.

Could you tell us about your career journey since graduating?

Oh wow, well, I certainly did not predict how much of an adventure my career would be when I was graduating! After graduating in 2020, I joined BCG (Boston Consulting Group)’s Social Impact and Education practices working with the Gates Foundation on getting drugs to low-income countries to respond to the COVID pandemic and getting affordable internet access to low-income students. I loved my work, but after for two years decided I wanted to gain more exposure to new spaces and get a fresh perspective outside of my Western education. I was admitted to Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, as a Schwarzman Scholar and returned to student life studying at for a MMSc in Global Affairs. My focus was understanding the evolution of architecture and urban planning through comparison between large cities and ethnic minority villages and between the US and China’s incentive and social systems.

Afterwards, I wanted a capstone experience to help me combine the sociocultural needs I’d seen in China with the practical planning and strategy skills to create systems change. So, in 2023, I came back to Boston after being admitted to Harvard Business School to start my MBA. Whilst at HBS, I’ve spent my time working on building the School’s infrastructure for social mobility programming as well as helping to lead a national education fund giving unconditional cash grants to low-income college students in engineering and computer science.

True to my stem cell biology background, global affairs degree, and the urgent needs emerging in the international development space, I’m joining a large NGO in global health, Evidence Action, this year as their Chief of Staff to deploy what I’ve learnt. Once I start, my portfolio will focus on deploying AI for social good in international aid contexts and accelerating R&D, but in the meantime, I’ll be joining a large San Francisco foundation, Open Philanthropy, to understand the global health strategy landscape. Given the priorities we’re facing right now internationally, this is where I think I can be most helpful right now.

What does a typical day look like for you at the moment?

I wish there was a typical day, but I’ve designed my life without one. Every day is a different problem, a different project, a different team, and a messy google calendar. I’m still wrapping up my final semester as an HBS MBA student, so often you’ll find me in class discussing emerging market economics or business unit strategy, but most of my day is taken up hopping between designing or presenting work for various social mobility programs I’m attached to. I can see the thread of Sutton Trust’s mission woven throughout my work, whether it’s working with HBS’s Deans building programs for low-income students or training machine learnings models for the education fund, or studying low-income country contexts, working to pay it forward through social mobility programs has become central to my day-to-day work. I adore what I do, so I can’t say it ever really feels like I’m “at work” rather than having fun, but when I’m done hopping between projects, I’m probably either sewing, swimming, throwing clay at the pottery studio, or leading an ecstatic dance workshop to loosen up.

Did you face any barriers in accessing your career – and how did you overcome these?

For sure, it’s tough being the only one in the room from your background. In the spaces I live and work in now, the vast majority of people do not have any experience of low-income environments, communities, or people. I grew up at the poverty line in England in a single parent household where nobody had ever been to university, but that’s invisible to people I meet who just hear the British accent and assume my childhood was like theirs. The burden of catching up to the dominant culture and lifestyle references can be hard, as can the burden of explaining my background or why I haven’t done or can’t do things other people can because of my background. Eight years in, I still grapple with the existential questions of which community or culture I belong in and accept that as part of this journey. That journey has taught me with certainty that the most important thing we can do on the way is to try and ensure voices and communities are represented in spaces that weren’t originally designed for them; spaces can’t change in silence.

Advice for future Sutton Trust students?

Don’t listen to too much advice. Advice is the way that someone else found a path that worked for them. Being comfortable enough to go and forge your own path is much, much more rewarding and the only way you’ll really be fulfilled. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

 

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