What does your role at Medilink Midlands involve?
I joined Medilink Midlands in August 2022 as Head of Finance. My role has since evolved to meet the needs of the team and to help manage the recent changes within the organisation. I work closely with Mel Davidson, our Chief Executive Officer, providing support with funding applications, initiating, and delivering KPIs, metrics, training and, importantly, for an organisation such as Medilink Midlands, compliance.
Since coming on board, we have expanded the finance team and promoted from within. It is important to recognise and support your team… helping to unlock their potential by leading, mentoring and coaching performance. The work we do is extremely demanding and we must be transparent in all our dealings especially when it comes to funnelling funding, so we all must ensure full accountability which means trusting in each other to deliver.
The team and I have recently helped with the financial closure and reporting on the hugely successful ERDF funded projects which ended in the summer of this year having delivered £3.5m of funding to East Midlands life sciences organisations.
Describe your career background.
Eclectic! I have focused my career on finance, but this was not the plan as a child and when I was growing up… I wanted to be a midwife! Since leaving school (cough) back in the day, I’ve been more focused on delivering spreadsheets than babies, unless you count my own of course!
After leaving school I qualified as a hairdresser and beautician. The three-year course included management qualifications which gave me a good platform to build on. Initially working as a hairdresser, I soon realised I wanted more job satisfaction, something different, and I love maths, so I started an administration job in finance and that’s where my thirst for learning more about this sector began. I have worked in commercial and not-for-profit, but certainly working from the ground up and diversifying into different sectors helped me progress to where I am today!
Along the way I have been extremely lucky to have had support and training to allow me to progress in many areas of running a business. Hard work and determination, moving sideways and upwards really has helped me reap the rewards!
What do you enjoy about working at Medilink Midlands?
I consider myself fortunate as we have great people here at Medilink and I enjoy working with them all, collaborating and engaging, they truly are a fantastic bunch. In terms of the work, I enjoy structure, bringing all the compliance elements together to deliver a more cohesive, robust system both internally for our own structural processes and externally, for those we support in the life sciences and med tech sectors.
Medilink Midlands is an exceptional place to work, we are experienced and fantastic at delivering support, advice, funding, and opportunities to organisations who need a helping hand and I feel immensely proud to be a member of the team. It is a pleasure to be part of the support these businesses need to commercialise their innovations.
How do you see your role evolving?
I would like to think that Medilink Midlands has a huge role to play in shaping the life sciences sector. It is part of my job to streamline the processes, provide better systems, encourage the team to continue to develop their skillsets. My vision is I would like Medilink Midlands to aim to be a centre for excellence.