On Tuesday 16 June, over 150 students and graduates joined us for the first Bristol Connects Live – our series of online career and professional development events. With a focus on entrepreneurship, our alumni experts shared their career stories and experience to inspire students and recent graduates to help them understand more about starting up their own businesses, opportunities and pitfalls, and the different routes to entrepreneurship.
Event host Izzy Obeng (BSc 2014), who works as Managing Director at Foundervine, highlighted the importance of building your network when starting up a business. For Izzy, having a strong community around her was invaluable and gave her the support and advice to continue to start and grow her business.
Izzy was joined on the panel by Sam Harris (BSc 2013), Founder of Syncify, and Mark Crowther (BSc 1993), Digital Innovation Lead at Amazon. The panel members explained how it is important to think creatively and to ensure you are passionate about the business idea you are going to start.
Speaking about the event, one of the attendees said: “thank you to all the panellists for kindly sharing their experiences, it was a fascinating and eye-opening session”.
The event recording is available here.
All alumni who helped out at the event are volunteers on our Bristol Volunteers programme. If you are experienced in speaking publicly and are willing to share your insights on your industry or ways of working, then we would love to welcome you as a panellist or event host.
If you are interested in volunteering for these events or would like to find out more, please contact the Bristol Volunteers team at alumni-volunteers@bristol.ac.uk.
The next Bristol Connects Live event on Tuesday 21 July, 2-3 pm will be focusing on careers within Government and the Third Sector. The event is free but pre-booking is essential.