“Working in higher education, Chartered status really comes into its own”

After three years, she wanted to gain more responsibility and to move into a management role. She joined a student experience project on secondment, working with complex cases across the university. This was a big project with different stakeholders. 

While in the job, Lizzie found out she was pregnant, which was not a straightforward experience for her. 

“I didn’t know people like I knew them in the disability office, so I found myself closing in a little bit and just keeping my head down,” she says. 

Once she came back from maternity leave, Covid hit, which threw the whole world – including academia – into “panic”. 

“I ended up being seconded from my secondment, because I had a student support background,” says Lizzie. “We had lots of phone lines open up and I had a lot of students and staff members in tears.” 

“Let’s see what you’ve got”

Following the pandemic, Lizzie took voluntary redundancy and then landed a job at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) as Law School department manager. Lizzie says this was the most “formative year” of her career to date, as the team she was working with was invested in both her career and her as a person. 

“It was a very administrative, operationally guided role, and my first full position that was not student-facing,” she says. “The team took the time not only to teach me, but also to accept the fact that my daughter was going to be there as well, as we were still coming out of Covid.”