My stepfather, who was an HR director, helped to guide me into HR as a profession. At 16, I joined an NHS Youth Training Scheme. As soon as a post in personnel came up, I took it and have been in HR ever since. I’m a people-oriented person and it was important to me that I could use these skills in my job.

I studied part time for 10 years while at the NHS, where I moved around a fair bit. I hated the contracts and information department because there was no interaction with people. It was dealing with stats and data and certainly helped to show my passion was HR.