How and why did you decide to go into communications?

Last summer, I was very lucky to land an opportunity with the Taylor Bennett Foundation where I joined a training programme aimed to provide young people of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic backgrounds the chance to learn about a career in communications and public relations. I didn’t have much experience in the industry before, but with a personal and professional enjoyment of news media and a desire to learn, I made my may through the eight weeks and met so many interesting people from various backgrounds across the technology, charity, and financial services sectors.

With this first insight into the industry, I was intrigued by how the media can be utilised as a tool to convey information, to tell a story, to sway the conversation, and mould a reputation. I was especially keen to work closer to the financial services sector itself alongside the media industry.

Describe your working pattern of the course of an average week and how you find a work-life balance.

My commute into the city is just slightly over an hour door to door and when the weather allows for it, I wake up just a little earlier to catch a quieter train on my way in. Journeying into the office gives me plenty of time to get ready for the day and read a book or listen in to the daily news briefing or politics weekly podcasts from the FT or The Guardian.

I prefer coming into the office during the busier mid-week days, when its lively and noisy. I feel that I can work a lot more efficiently in a busier office environment because it’s so easy to ask for help or even request a quick look over; there’s more of a possibility to work collaboratively.

What areas or trends interest you the most at this time?

At the moment, I’m interested in learning more about sovereign wealth funds. There was a lot of discussion when the National Wealth Fund was launched after the summer election in the UK on whether it is a SWF or not. This made me wonder whether the UK could open a SWF in future and challenged what my understanding of what it would look like for a non-major commodity exporting economy.

More recently, I’ve been considering the correlation between economies with SWFs and the quality of the public goods available in those countries. Naturally, with excess capital and the wealth from greater returns, it comes down to the politics of the government on whether to then remove the burden of a tax, essentially removing a fundamental element of the social contract, and operate a largely free market economy, or to maintain fiscal policy and offer greater funding to public services. Perhaps the answer is that there is no correlation and that political and cultural elements play a stronger role than economics alone. I’m curious to dive deeper in this topic.

What do you do in your spare time?

I enjoy reading literary fiction, magical realism, historical fiction, history, politics, and memoirs. In recent years, I’ve specifically sought out writings by female authors, and most recently I’ve loved reading works by Anais Nin and Arundhati Roy.

I also enjoy going to the theatres and watching plays, its become somewhat of a tradition for an old friend and I to catch up over dinner, followed by Les Mis or The Book of Mormon once every other month.

In my downtime, I find cooking and baking very therapeutic. I’ve been steadily building a cookbook of my own to keep my family recipes intact, and it’s brought a new appreciation for the skill. I like to take things slow when I cook and savour the fragrances when I bake.

Tell us about the last book you read or the last podcast you listened to?

Jazz is the first Toni Morrison book I’ve read. It’s actually the second book of a series and comes after Beloved, but I read the first page of the book and I bought it. Morrison’s writing is immediately captivating and, even though I wasn’t clued into the story, the novel begins with a scorned woman bringing a knife to the funeral of her husband’s young mistress and running home to free her birds and still made for an incredible standalone book.

Set in the early 20th century in ‘the City,’ most likely Harlem although never explicitly confirmed, Morrison weaves a story about recently urbanised African American community, at the heart of which lies Violet, a deeply complex woman who finds her mind unravelling as she grapples with her husband’s actions, as well as her own.

Name one goal, professional or personal, you have set yourself for the next 12 months

I’ve been learning to swim on and off for a couple of years now and I’ve still never made it to the deep end without a life jacket. I’m not looking forward to taking the plunge and learning how to swim further out, but I am really looking forward to finally swimming out into the ocean once I do.