“Learning never stops” – a phrase I wholeheartedly agree with. As a child, I was always that annoying one that constantly asked ‘why’. My mind is still curious about the way the world works (or doesn’t work) and I have deeply entrenched values of justice, equality and fairness. That, put together with my desire to improve public service, led me to join the civil service at the MoJ after graduating university and I knew I had found the right calling. I’ve moved around central Government departments and undertaken varied roles over my 13 years – strategy, Ministerial office, international, corporate and operational delivery as well as policy.

When I was promoted into the Senior Civil Service, I had the acute realisation that I was now in a leadership position where people looked to me for direction, answers and fresh thinking. I wanted to be more innovative and creative, remaining up to date with evidence and latest research so I kept growing as a leader. By extension, me (and my team) had the best chance of success when it came to tackling complex social justice issues.

I started to think about how important it is to keep learning and try a secondment outside of the civil service. I had given some thought to where I might want to spend a year, perhaps third sector or private sector, but since I had worked very closely with academics in various roles in my career I reached out to one of our established stakeholders that I had a relationship with through my work in Legal Support who is at UCL, Professor Dame Hazel Genn. Luckily for me, she saw the strategic benefit of such a secondment immediately, particularly as I had recently arranged for an inward secondment of someone from UCL to MoJ for 12 months to help us work on health-justice partnerships to address legal need in health settings. I felt that if I wanted an innovative and creative environment to expose me to a different way of working and culture, where better than one of world’s leading institutions in education and research!