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Chemistry
York University |
"The accountability and responsibility that I experienced has been invaluable throughout the whole of my career."
"I went to York University and studied Chemistry prior to graduating in 1992. That year, I started on the Supply Chain graduate trainee scheme at the newly formed Trebor Bassett. I spent my first two years managing production teams, leading capital projects and scheduling manufacturing lines across a number of different UK sites. The accountability and responsibility that I experienced on the scheme has been invaluable throughout the whole of my career in the way I now work with other people and make decisions.
"Since then, my career with Cadbury has gone from strength to strength! For six years from October 1994, I was a Line Manager in the Trebor Bassett Logistics function, followed by a move in 2000 (when Cadbury and Trebor Bassett merged to create the No.1 confectionery business in the UK) to the Commercial Team in the newly formed organisation. Reporting to the Marketing Director, I took on the role as Head of Activity Management where I was responsible for setting up from scratch a new team that brought project management skills and cross-functional working into the normal day-to-day way of doing business.
"After three years, I was given the additional responsibility of rolling out our product change processes across the newly formed Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) confectionery region - spanning Ireland to Russia to Scandinavia to South Africa. Within a year, and after a significant up-weighting in my skills, the process had started to roll out in at least 20 of the EMEA businesses and so I moved into the role I am in today.
"My current role is again fairly new to the organisation and has required me to exercise leadership skills and drive clearly measurable incremental business into a key strategic imperative of the UK business - again a fantastically challenging role that I am thoroughly enjoying!
"So why work at Cadbury? To me, the main driver is the opportunity to move across functions and yet still progress through the organisation - at every step within roles that are vastly different, challenging and consequential to the business performance."