We spoke with Emily Heslop, alumna of the Master in Sustainable Business & Innovation. Emily is from the United Kingdom and holds a bachelor’s degree in Chinese and International Business from the University of Leeds.
While at EADA, she participated in a wide variety of activities including consulting with a B Impact Team. Emily currently works as a Project Manager at Innovation Forum, an independent company with experience in sustainable events and publishing. Here she shares her experience and her career journey after graduation.
Tell us a bit about your career journey since you began the master’s at EADA.
Since beginning my Master’s at EADA, I was pretty uncertain about where I wanted my career to go. Truthfully, I still am pretty unsure what I will do long-term! But the Master’s helped me identify my professional strengths and weaknesses, while reigniting my passion for learning. Since leaving EADA, I have been extremely fortunate to find a job that I love and can continue to develop my understanding of sustainability.
What are your main responsibilities as Project Manager at Innovation Forum? What attracted you to the company?
Main responsibilities
- Conduct in-depth research into specific issues and industries to build an understanding of the main sustainability challenges faced by business
- Write a comprehensive two-day agenda that reflects your research into the area and key business trends
- Prospect senior sustainability professionals, build relationships and confirm participation in conferences
- Market the conference and drive delegate registrations via various marketing channels and strategies, primarily online
- Coordinate supporting research and publishing, including written content, podcasts and webinars
After seeing Innovation Forum’s job posting on LinkedIn one Wednesday morning in November, I instantly saw myself doing the role, so applied. That Friday, after having my first interview with the MD, my intuition told me it was the right company for me. Since getting the job offer the following Wednesday, I have not looked back!
What is the most challenging part of your current position? And the most rewarding?
The most challenging part of my current position is to take a huge topic such as plastic pollution and design a 2 day, 20+ session agenda, which covers all of the current major issues within the business landscape.
As for the most rewarding part of my job, I suspect it will be seeing my conferences actually take place and meeting all of the speakers I have been in contact with since the start of event preparations.
What aspects of the Master in Sustainable Business & Innovation would you highlight? How did the programme prepare you for your current position?
The Master’s Program definitely gave me a holistic understanding of the key sustainability challenges and the interconnected nature of them. It has given me a great foundation of knowledge to continue building on. The intensity of the Master’s program, with multiple projects going on at once, has definitely helped with my organization skills in my current role at Innovation Forum.
How would you describe your experience in the B Impact Team?
It was a really insightful 4 week program that taught me how to use the BIA (Business Impact Assessment), which any company seeking to get B Corp certification has to complete. Our team consulted for Both. People & Comms to develop an action plan on how they could improve their score to get certified. It was a great experience, one that I was able to use after the Masters in my Freelancing work for upriseUP, a UK-based digital marketing agency.
The biggest takeaway was recognising the complexity of sustainability challenges and the importance of multi-stakeholder involvement.
What was the biggest take away from your final project with the Landscape Association in Extremadura, Spain?
The biggest takeaway was recognising the complexity of sustainability challenges and the importance of multi-stakeholder involvement. One of the major parts of our project involved creating tailored & practical communication tools for Asociación Paisaje to engage with key stakeholders and build advocacy partnerships.
How would you describe your year abroad in Barcelona at EADA?
Insightful, fun and memorable!