Empowering the next generation

By Caroline Rudge, MEPC

This week we launched our inaugural Female Empowerment Day with 40 school students visiting Paradise to learn more about the career opportunities available across the estate.

With workshops, events and an all-female panel talking about their real-life experiences and professional development routes, the students got to meet and talk with people who have built their own careers in a range of local, national and international businesses.

The Female Empowerment Day event included students from our partner schools Tile Cross Academy, Aston Manor Academy, Bordesley Green Girls School and Nishkam High School in Newtown, and was part of the wider year-round Paradise Future Skills Unlocked school engagement programme delivered by Ahead Partnership.

Individual sessions, kindly hosted by our occupiers, included a personal branding workshop, a day in the life presentation from a range of different people and their jobs, speed networking and a Have Your Say panel.

The wider Future Skills Unlocked programme, now in its second year, presents a regular series of events and opportunities for local school students to experience the world of work and hear from people in various roles across the more than 50 Paradise employers.

The day’s highlight was listening to the professional panel members talk about their own personal experiences and some of the challenges they had faced, and subsequently overcome, to carve a successful career in the world of business.

Selena Ohlsson, Director, Real Estate Solutions at Federated Hermes, Rachael Dagger, ESG Manager at Dains Accountants, Surjit Deuer, Senior ESG Engagement Manager at Mills and Reeves and Saffron Pougher, engineer at Arup, contributed and provided very different stories of their own experiences of education, travelling, working and teamwork in a range of different sectors.

Most of all, the event allowed the students to hear from people working across a range of businesses and ask questions about the world of work, especially from the perspective of a corporate environment like Paradise and its occupiers.

Thanks to Arup, AtkinsRéalis, Dains Accountants, DLA Piper, F1 Arcade, Goldman Sachs, Mills & Reeve and Quilter Cheviot for their involvement and on-going support for the Future Skills Unlocked programme.