For the latest updates from your alumni community
We love hearing your stories from your time at Bristol, especially when they’re accompanied by great pictures like these from David Dance (MB ChB Medicine, 1979).
David regularly meets up with other University of Bristol cricketers of the 1970s and would love to hear from other team-mates who are interested in meeting up. If that’s you (or someone you know!) get in touch with us at alumni@bristol.ac.uk.
We are delighted with the announcement of Lucy Bell as the 2020 recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award for writer-in-residence at Bristol’s Theatre Collection. The award will support Lucy in creating a new dramatic work inspired by Elyot’s archive, which was donated to the Theatre Collection by his sister following his death in 2014. The archive comprises scripts, correspondence, manuscripts and publicity material, detailing Elyot’s working process from initial idea to finished product.
The Award is an annual award of £3,000 made in memory of Department of Theatre alumnus Kevin Elyot (1951-2014), and the influence he has had on writing and the arts. It has been generously funded by an endowment gift given to the University of Bristol by Kevin’s family.
After graduating from Bristol in 2014 with a politics degree, Izzy Obeng worked at KPMG before starting her own company – Foundervine. This award-winning social enterprise helps diverse founders build start-ups from scratch and specialises in delivering digital start-up and scale-up acceleration programs.
Since launching in 2018, Foundervine has helped over 2,000 future leaders from diverse backgrounds to create and build their own ventures. 27-year-old Izzy is now based in Accra in Ghana, and her team of twelve work remotely in locations up and down the UK. As well as sitting on the Alumni Association Committee, Izzy has been involved in alumni events – including a recent Bristol Connects Live event focused on entrepreneurship. We spoke to Izzy to hear more about Foundervine, her time at Bristol and what it was like to meet the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
After graduating from the University in 2011 with a Maths degree, Natalie Podd spent five years working as an actuary before taking a career break and going travelling with her partner, Ceri. They spent a year climbing mountains, exploring salt flats and trekking through rainforests. As well as coming home with a whole host of incredible memories, the pair also managed to return to the UK with a fully formed idea for a new boardgame.
The couple launched the game, entitled Confident? in 2018 and, after receiving positive reviews, were quickly noticed by John Lewis and Waterstones. Here, Natalie explains how the game works and talks about the reality of balancing a more traditional career alongside running a small business.
On Tuesday 21 July, our alumni volunteers shared their career stories with students and recent graduates. The event was part of our Bristol Connects Live series – our online series of career and professional development events. The session focused on careers in government and the third sector and our alumni experts shared their career stories and experiences to inspire students and recent graduates to help them understand more about the sector.
The event was hosted by Kim Slim (LLB 2016) who works as Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister’s Independent Grenfell Adviser and Head of Grenfell Community Support Team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Kim was joined on the panel by Annabelle Pemberton (BA 2018), Organisational Development Officer at Redearth Education and Shailini Vora (BSc 2016), Trust Fundraising Officer at St Mungo’s.
Our Class of 2020, who are enjoying their Virtual Celebrations this month, had some inspirational student voices speaking at their digital events. We caught up with some of them to hear about their time at Bristol, their passions, and their plans for the future. And we welcome them into our alumni community!
As final-year Bristol students prepare to mark the end of their time at the University through online ‘Summer Celebration’ events, we caught up with Bristol alumna Rebecca Hellen (BA 1994), to reflect on her own time at the University. A graduate of the Faculty of Arts, Rebecca worked as Senior Paintings Conservator at Tate for 18 years, and has recently taken up a new role as Specialist Advisor and Paintings Conservator at the National Trust. She shares her career story and lends some tips for how to stay creative in lockdown.
From final-year medics graduating early to work on the NHS frontline, to groups organising foodbank donations, throughout this year Bristol students have been stepping up to assist those impacted by the pandemic. Many of our final-year students have been taking part in such activities, all whilst working hard to complete their degrees.
For these students, their time at the University is almost at an end. So, to mark their incredible achievements and commemorate their final year, the University is hosting a series of virtual celebrations for the class of 2020. The events will be hosted online and will see Bristol students from all over the world signing in from home to watch with their friends and family.
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.
Every year, just after welcome week, the University hosts a welcome event for our Sanctuary Scholars, an incredible group of students who all come from asylum-seeking or refugee communities.
The welcome event is always a really special day, where the newest cohort of scholars get to meet each other, as well as staff and students from the University.
This year, as you can imagine, we can’t welcome our scholars in quite the same way. But whilst we might not be able to be together in one room, we can still do our very best to let these students know that they are a valued part of the Bristol community. We hope you’ll join us in doing so!