I was grateful and perhaps a little surprised to be awarded a place on the Women in PR/PR Week mentoring scheme in summer 2020, having applied pretty last minute, thinking I was unlikely to get a place.

I work in Public Affairs, and whilst that sort of happened accidentally, having hankered after a pure Comms job in my early 20s, and giving up a communications officer post in the very small office of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in 2009, heading off to Cardiff to work in politics, I had never left my passion for all things communications behind.

My biggest reason for applying to the scheme was that I felt that whilst I love Public Affairs, I couldn’t see how my career path would lead my to a senior post that would oversee a comms function because it didn’t seem to me that a potential employer would feel I had the necessary skills of both sides of the sphere.

Of course, in reality, there are and always have been many sides to comms, and my mentor, Paul Stephenson, founder of Hanbury Strategy, helped me accept that reality, and overcome a little of my imposter syndrome in this area. I have always written press releases, articles and achieved many successful campaign wins throughout my career, but what I needed was a helping hand in telling my story and thinking about where I would like my career to take me.

Women in PR’s mentoring scheme has expanded this year to take on more mentors, including male mentors, and this is something I thought was actually very exciting. Whilst the women mentors on the scheme have overcome many obstacles in their careers, I strongly believe that for women to achieve true equality in the workplace, we need male champions.

I was very lucky to have got Paul as a mentor, someone who has been described as ‘by common consent one of the best communicators and operators in Westminster’. We have been able to talk through politics at Westminster and Wales level as well as the finer details of the options that might be available to me moving forward with my career. We spoke about whether or not I needed to hold a comms or PR qualification, especially after 10 years of working in the field and Paul was able to put me in touch with a colleague who talked me through what to expect if I did it, as well as his own employer’s perspective on how the qualification is viewed.

Also, as luck would have it, as I interviewed for the menteeship, I had been lucky enough to secure a new job which was building a team and a public affairs strategy. Paul helped me by asking me what my aspirations for the team were in this organisation, where the opportunities were and how I could shape this opportunity for my future roles after that.

I am now happily settled into my new role, looking forward to the new Senedd term and working with Welsh Government, but also having enrolled on the CIPR Professional PR Diploma and ready to start my first project. The first thing Paul realised about me is that I am a perpetual learner and so even though I might not need to do this course, I’d always wanted to and I’m really looking forward to having it on my CV, hopefully by the end of the year!

I’d highly recommend this scheme and mentoring in general. And if you’re lucky enough to work with someone as high calibre as the mentors this scheme provides, the insight you will gain into the industry and yourself will be invaluable.