The academic year 2020/21 proved to be quite the challenge all around – teaching staff and students adapted to remote learning, internships and work opportunities disappeared across the board, and the privileges of building in-person relationships were limited to two dimensions. It could easily have been a whitewash – but just as we were building up our collections of recorded material, the Lancaster magic started to happen.

As an alumna myself, I know how powerful the Lancaster experience is, and how it stays with you long after graduation. For the best part of a decade in the LUMS Careers Team, I have had lists of alumni, both early career and veterans, who are always up for delivering guest lectures, providing a mock interview or chatting one-on-one with a student interested in their field. Last year was different. From March 2020, alumni came forward to offer help, support and contacts to students, graduates and teaching staff, and they kept coming for the next 16 months! They volunteered in droves for online Q&A sessions, live CV reviews, podcasts, projects, and – more recently – to take part in two seminal department events – Marketing Me Launch and our final year Transitions Milestone day.

Marketing Me 2021 saw 12 alumni mentor first-year students working on a live brief for Brand Advance, their first shot at applying their marketing knowledge to a real project, designing a campaign and pitching for the win.

The Transitions Milestone day brought together small groups of alumni to help finalists make sense of their previous three years of education, challenging them with current issues and having them practise critical lateral linking and commercial awareness on the spot.

Both events were designed specifically to help bridge the experience gap created by the pandemic; boosting CVs with current activities and improving students’ abilities to articulate effective and stand-out arguments in a recruitment cycle.

Darren Savage, Chief Strategy Officer for Tribal Worldwide (BSc Marketing, 1996) said: “I benefitted from alumni visiting Lancaster when I was an undergraduate in terms of working out what I wanted to do upon graduation; now I have the opportunity to begin the cycle again and hopefully the next generation of marketers will also return.”

Olly Heron, Modern Work Lead at Microsoft (BA Advertising and Marketing, 2015) said: “It's great to be able to support the launch event and stay connected to LUMS, a transformational place in my own life and development. Each year, the Marketing Me Launch event highlights fresh creative and strategic talent to a live client and helps to build confidence in the students who participate that their academic preparation deeply translates to the way businesses and agencies think about briefs.”

2021 BSc Marketing Management graduate, Avni Sarawagi said: “I loved the variety of people on the Transitions event. They showed me how careers don’t have to take linear paths and there’s so much potential that a marketing degree can unlock – from making waves in an advertising network to shedding light on world issues at the WHO.” Avni has since gone on to secure a graduate role as an EMEA New Business Exec with UM Global.

Embryo’s Head of Content, Hannah Skulnick (BA Advertising and Marketing, 2015; MSc Psychology of Advertising, 2016) summed up the benefits perfectly: “There are so many different paths that individuals can take into their careers, but I certainly believe that a university degree can be a big help - due to the opportunity to work with real clients and the support from lecturers who know their stuff. But more than this, the guidance, events and talks offering insight into the working world, and how to find success in it, boosted my confidence and self-belief. I was honoured to take part in a talk myself recently, all about my career trajectory. It was great to hear from the other guest speakers too, and learn about their experiences and their wonderful successes. Lancaster really does care about its students, their progression, and their futures.”

It would have been easy to lose track of just how many of our alumni gave time to our students, making the hopeless feel hopeful and motivating even the most cynical of us. If 2020-21 taught us anything, it was that the relationships we invest in every day with our students repay themselves over and over, creating a powerful and quite humbling cycle of paying it forward.

Vicky Metcalf - LUMS Marketing Careers Coach and alumni devotee!

With thanks to the following alumni for their help – and apologies to any I may have missed out:

Timour Abdelrazek, Deena Anise, Junaid Asghar, Tobias Dahlhaus, Simona Dimitrova, Lauren Dowdy, Charlotte Evans, Alexandra Everett, Andrew Francomb, Sharlene Gandhi, Islay Grant, James Grantham, Olly Heron, Chioma Ikpa, Anastasia Klimczyk, Claudia Poole, Abbie Lawton, Emma Lindsay, Chloe Long, Victor Olawuni, Nadine Ong, Eleanor Navrady, Jodi Rilot, Kelsey Robb, Matt Robinson, Anna Rohrhofer, Pascal Rota, Darren Savage, Hannah Skulnick, Ellie Tytler, Harriet Tuite, Catherine Walker and Harith Wilson.

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