I enjoyed a fourteen year career in the British Army that took me all over the world, exposed me to the best and worst that life could offer, and gave me the most incredible experiences.
I joined aged eighteen, rebelling from the expected university route. I then served operationally in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, and exercised on the prairies of Canada, the icy lakes of Norway and the arid plains of Kenya, as well as many other locations.
Having always having had the aptitude for languages, I later found myself at the Defence School of Languages learning Pashto. From there I was deployed to Afghanistan as an interpreter, conducting hearts and minds efforts as well as low level intelligence gathering.
I loved my career but in 2014 it all came to an end when injuries I had sustained were not healing as quickly as they should have. Without taking any time to absorb what had happened, I threw myself straight into working in project management consultancy. Five years later I made the decision to join BAE Systems Digital Intelligence because I knew I would be working with like-minded people - many of whom would come from a similar background as I did, which gave me confidence.
It was clear to me that upon joining I would have benefited from having a dedicated veterans network. So I made it my mission - along with other employees from across the UK and beyond - to build an employee resource group called VetNet, to provide tangible support and benefits to our employees from the military.