Student Futures Board Members
Pijus Petniunas
Current role: Research Manager, Ecorys
While studying with us at Leeds, how did you feel about your future career and life after university?
While I enjoyed research and my Masters was a great fit for my interests, I didn't have a clear idea of what exactly I would be doing professionally after my studies. I was interested in the relationships between policies and outcomes for service beneficiaries and professionals within them and wanted to apply research to inform policy and best practice in some form. I knew that my studies opened a broad number of career options, and that my degree would be valued wherever I chose to apply my skills in meaningful work.
What steps has your career taken since graduating?
After graduating from my Masters I explored whether carrying on reading for a PhD was the right option for me then. I sought advice from my supervisor, current PhD students, and professionals working in research, and in the end decided against it and went onto work at the Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service (LMWS) as a Service User Consultant. There I had the opportunity to support LMWS to design and deliver mental health services together with people that use them through co-production. I applied qualitative and quantitative skills, carried out surveys, facilitated discussions and focus groups, and represented the needs of service users.
I was keen to pursue a career in applied social research and later joined Ecorys – a research-based consultancy. I joined the Policy and Research team as a UK social policy Research Assistant and later progressed into a Research Manager role. As a mixed-methods researcher, I contribute to research and evaluation studies across a range of policy areas, including regional development, health and social care, children and families, and financial inclusion. This can involve a range of methods to best provide evidence-based advice and support for our clients.
Which skills do you now use at work that you wish you’d learned more about during your degree?
My degree equipped me with a broad range of research skills which I regularly apply at work today! However, even coming from a social research background, I wish I knew a bit more about evaluation methods during my degree. Particularly economic, theory-based, experimental, and quasi-experimental impact evaluation methods. I also knew little about the commercial world of research - how research is commissioned and what commercial proposals involve. Generative AI began to be widely used during my studies, and this is something we are always learning more about while placing a strong emphasis on research quality, ethics, and data protection. Learning more about its applications and limitations in research would have been useful during my studies, although it was quite new then.
What career advice would you give to current or prospective students?
Make use of support offered by the careers service, they can help you make a start exploring career options and provide practical guidance on next steps. Speak to professionals working in the areas you're interested in! You can grow your network by reaching out to people directly or attending events. Skills that you develop on your degree are highly transferrable – look for opportunities that might not be an obvious fit. You will invariably be learning lots throughout your career and your skills can be applied in wider areas than it immediately seems.
How excited are you for the new Student Futures Board? What role can it play in supporting our students?
I’m very excited to join the Student Futures Board and collaborate with the School to contribute to enhancing our students’ employability and work-readiness after graduation. The Board will provide advice, guidance, and insight into the ‘world of work’, and help to surface the right skills you need in your career quest.
Shairb Mohammed
Current role: Job Coach, Lighthouse Futures Trust
While studying with us at Leeds, how did you feel about your future career and life after university?
When I was studying at Leeds, my feelings towards my career and life changed as I worked through the different levels of undergraduate study. I learned lots about inequality, and my favourite modules were those that explored these issues directly, such as Sociology of Cinema (Race and Hollywood) and Social Inequality. I particularly enjoyed the teachings of Zygmunt Bauman, especially his work on refugees.
I was learning about inequality and had a very strong theoretical understanding of the distribution of power and economics, and how redistribution can change people’s lives and undo inequality in some ways. However, I had no practical tools or understanding of how this would happen, or even could happen, until I did a module in my second year appropriately titled Social Policy Beyond the University.
This was a hands-on module where you were sent to work for an organisation. I was sent to a place called Foundation, where they supported homeless people with a wide range of difficulties, such as working dangerous jobs as prostitutes, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, domestic abuse and vulnerable young people. We were tasked with doing a research project on how volunteering and austerity had affected the organisation and what impact the volunteers had.
Alongside doing this research task independently, we were invited to shadow at the Harrogate branch and work directly with the young people they supported in many different ways, helping them with administration, housing issues, opening bank accounts and more, under the mentorship of a senior support worker. It was this experience that showed me that being a sociologist could literally be a career where I could work directly with disadvantaged people.
At university, I had other amazing opportunities to develop my skills, such as being captain of the Leeds University Boxing Club. I had my own budget of £10,000 and different sporting and community goals to achieve, such as opening up the sport to disabled participants, organising volunteers and being a leader of the committee. It was a priceless experience for building my confidence and skills.
What steps has your career taken since graduating?
I have worked mostly in the education and sports sectors, working as a war and conflict lecturer, lecturing mostly on the Iraq War, Afghanistan War and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I also lectured on other modules covering social inequality and terrorism in further education, firstly at Leeds City College’s Uniformed Services department and then at Bradford College, where I worked as Head of Year for first-year students. It was an amazing experience working with the next generation of Uniformed Services and tackling issues with them head-on.
I have worked as an assistant boxing coach at both Northside, a mixed-ability boxing club, and Tigers ABC before moving up the ranks to become Sporting Director of the club. I was head of coaches and worked with a squad of around 50 boxers, including the University of Leeds Boxing Club. It was an excellent leadership position, working with very disadvantaged young people in Leeds and developing champions along the way.
I also volunteered for some time at another boxing club, Training Cave, working on their boxing and employability programme with some of the most deprived young people in Birstall, teaching them the social and practical skills needed to gain employment.
After this, I started my current job as the Trailblazer Employability Programme Lead, working with 20 people to move them into employment and education. These young people were very disadvantaged and neurodivergent, with only around 5% of this group being in employment. Our charity, Lighthouse Futures Trust, gets 85% of young people into employment after graduating with us.
From September, I will be moving to the Pre-Internship Employment Team, where I will prepare young neurodivergent people for a year’s internship with our employer partners.
Which skills do you now use at work that you wish you’d learned more about during your degree?
I think relationship building would be the biggest one, not just with people but with institutions too.
Overall, I would like to thank the university for truly changing my life, both academically in how I see the world, but also through the practical experience of how I engage with it in a way where I can try and change things with a clear sense of strategy. I think that’s what university gave me: the opportunity to do this, and I had the confidence to take these opportunities to develop myself.
I do think just doing projects really helps, and I wish I could have done more. However, I do feel I kept myself busy with studying abroad, work placement modules and running the university boxing club for two years.
What career advice would you give to current or prospective students?
Just finishing on from what I have written, I’d say to take up the opportunities. Schedule the time to speak to teachers, use the open days, enquire about opportunities and ask for help if you can’t seem to get into a place where you want to volunteer. With Leeds University, try and get a committee position and try to volunteer in a local organisation. All these things kept me in good stead.
I’d say be proud of being a sociologist. It gives you a unique perspective on the world. At university, you are lucky to be surrounded by other sociologists and scholars, but in the wider world this may not be possible, so your insights will be very valuable.
I have only ever met one other sociologist since leaving university, and in my overall 14-year work career, my insights are always commented on for being both unique and sharp, making sense of things and seeing things differently. Ultimately, the difference is my sociological imagination, so keep it, work on it and use it.
We understand societal problems better than most, so use your voice, even when it is uncomfortable. It’s not about winning arguments; it’s about offering different perspectives that make someone think, “I never saw it like that.”
How excited are you for the new Student Futures Board? What role can it play in supporting our students?
I am very excited and want to help in any way possible. I have given university students from different universities placements to work directly with me. I worked with two students and would love to offer this to fellow sociologists in the future, to come and work with me at Lighthouse Futures Trust.
We have different things and goals we are trying to achieve that students would be great for as extra-curricular activities. They could help develop social capital in the young people we work with, bang down employer doors to offer work experience or jobs for our young people, volunteer with our weekly boxing session, or help to develop and run sports clubs, arts clubs and more.
There is lots to do. All you need is enthusiasm and a willingness to try – and fail. There is no better teacher than failure and experience, so don’t worry about it.
Helen Dannatt
Current role: Senior Engagement Lead. Skills for Care
While studying with us at Leeds, how did you feel about your future career and life after university?
Honestly, I don't think I thought about it too much. Partly because it felt overwhelming, and partly because I was enjoying being a student and wasn't looking too far beyond that stage of life. I knew, in a fairly broad sense, that I wanted to do something 'meaningful', and public sector roles appealed to me most. As I approached the end of my studies and started exploring opportunities more seriously, I found the university's careers support useful. It helped me discover possibilities I wouldn't otherwise have known about. It was through the university that I learned about the Leeds City Council Graduate Scheme open day, which ultimately led to my first role after graduating. I was particularly drawn to a graduate scheme because it felt like a supportive way to transition into the world of work.
What steps has your career taken since graduating?
Over the past nine years, I have built my career across the public and third sectors, maintaining a strong connection to government policy, communities, and improving people's day-to-day lives.
I began on the Leeds City Council Graduate Scheme, working across a range of directorates and projects, including community safety, adult social care, and children's services. I then moved into a Communications and Engagement role within Child Friendly Leeds, where I focused on engaging partners, communities and young people around the city's ambitions for children and families. Following that, I spent a year at Doncaster Council, helping to develop a sustainable locality-based way of working across the borough. Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) was a key part of this work, ensuring local people and community strengths were at the centre of service design and delivery.
I then joined Skills for Care, the national charity focused on building a strong and sustainable adult social care workforce. Since joining, I have progressed to a Senior Engagement Lead role, where I manage a team and help translate national policy and reform into something meaningful for the social care workforce. A key part of my role is also ensuring that the experiences of those working across social care help shape conversations taking place at a national level.
Which skills do you now use at work that you wish you’d learned more about during your degree?
My degree gave me a strong foundation in critical thinking, research, writing and curiosity, all of which I still use every day. What I wish I'd understood more about were the practical realities of how organisations operate. Things like organisational politics, funding models, decision-making processes, and the constraints that influence what organisations can and cannot do. Early in your career, it's easy to think that passion and good ideas are enough. Over time, I've learned that creating change often means balancing different priorities, navigating competing pressures, and understanding the wider environment in which decisions are made. That's not necessarily a negative thing. It's about learning how to have impact in a realistic setting and recognising that meaningful change often happens within organisational and political constraints rather than outside them.
What career advice would you give to current or prospective students?
Follow organisations that genuinely interest you on LinkedIn and keep an eye on their websites. This can help you spot funding announcements, new projects and recruitment opportunities before they appear on mainstream job boards. I would also encourage students to be open-minded about how they start their careers. A graduate scheme can be a great route, but it isn't the only route. Sometimes joining an organisation in a more junior role and building your experience internally can be just as valuable and can ultimately lead you towards your ideal career. I have seen many people do this in my current organisation.
Most importantly, look for organisations whose values resonate with your own. Skills and experience matter, but employers are also looking for people who are genuinely motivated by their mission. If you can clearly explain why you want to work for a particular organisation and why its purpose matters to you, it can make a real difference.
How excited are you for the new Student Futures Board? What role can it play in supporting our students?
I am really excited to be part of the Student Futures Board. I think the board has an important role to play in helping bridge the gap between education and employment. Thinking about the future can feel overwhelming because there are so many possible paths to take. The board can help provide practical insights, real-world perspectives and reassurance that careers are rarely linear.
It can also help shine a light on lesser-known sectors, organisations and career pathways that students may not otherwise encounter. Ultimately, I hope it helps students better understand their options, identify what motivates them, and feel more confident about taking their next steps.
Akua Osei Bimpong
Current Role: Conflicts Analyst, DAC Beachcroft LLP
While studying with us at Leeds, how did you feel about your future career and life after university?
While studying at Leeds, I felt excited about the possibilities ahead, but I was also still exploring exactly where I wanted my career to take me. My MA in Social and Public Policy gave me a strong foundation in policy analysis, systems modelling, policy evaluation and public administration, and I knew I wanted to pursue work where I could use those analytical and problem-solving skills in a meaningful way. At the same time, I was open to seeing where my skills and experiences would lead me. Looking back, I think that openness was important because my career has developed in a direction I might not have predicted when I first started my degree.
What steps has your career taken since graduating?
Since graduating from Leeds in 2024, my career has developed into the legal and compliance sector. I initially worked as a Conflicts Assistant at Eversheds Sutherland, where I conducted conflicts checks, analysed potential legal and commercial conflicts, worked with legal teams and helped maintain information barriers protecting confidential client information.
I then progressed to my current role as a Conflicts Analyst at DAC Beachcroft. In this role, I conduct more than 30 conflicts checks daily, interrogate data to identify potential legal and commercial conflicts, work with partners and fee earners to resolve issues, support lateral-hire checks and assist with client onboarding and sanctions checks.
Although this is different from the traditional policy career I initially expected, there is a clear connection between my academic background and my current work. My degree developed my ability to analyse complex information, understand systems and consider how decisions affect different stakeholders, while my professional experience has allowed me to apply those skills in a practical and commercially focused environment.
Which skills do you now use at work that you wish you’d learned more about during your degree?
One area I wish I had explored more during my degree is the practical application of compliance, risk management and regulatory analysis within organisations. My degree gave me a strong understanding of policy analysis, systems modelling and evaluation, but working professionally has shown me how important it is to apply those analytical skills quickly and accurately when dealing with real-world risks and competing priorities.
I also wish I had spent more time developing practical stakeholder-management and commercial skills. In my current role, I work with partners, fee earners and different teams to identify potential conflicts and find practical solutions to commercial issues. Those experiences have taught me that strong analysis is only part of the solution; being able to communicate your findings clearly and work collaboratively with different stakeholders is equally important.
What career advice would you give to current or prospective students?
My biggest piece of advice would be not to feel that you have to know exactly what career you want before you graduate. Your degree gives you a foundation of skills, but your career can take you in directions you may not have anticipated.
I would encourage students to take advantage of opportunities that develop transferable skills, particularly communication, analytical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and stakeholder engagement. I would also recommend gaining practical experience alongside your studies where possible. My own experiences across policy research, administration, project coordination and eventually conflicts and compliance helped me understand what I was good at and what kind of working environment suited me.
Most importantly, don’t underestimate the value of being open to opportunities that don’t initially look like the obvious next step. Sometimes those opportunities can become the foundation for your career.
How excited are you for the new Student Futures Board? What role can it play in supporting our students?
I am very excited about being part of the Student Futures Board because I think students benefit enormously from hearing honest experiences from people who have recently made the transition from university into professional life.
The Board can provide a valuable bridge between students’ academic experiences and the realities of the workplace. It can help students understand the different career paths available to them, develop confidence in their transferable skills and appreciate that there isn’t always a single or straightforward route into a successful career.
I would particularly like to contribute by sharing my own experience of moving from a background in social and public policy into legal conflicts and compliance. I hope that my journey can demonstrate to students that the analytical, research and problem-solving skills developed at university can be applied across different sectors, and that being open to new opportunities can lead to career paths you may not initially have considered.
Susannah Afford
While studying with us at Leeds, how did you feel about your future career and life after university?
I came to the University of Leeds from a working-class background, I was the 2nd person in my immediate family to attend university also. Prior to attending university, I was unaware of the availability of career options and opportunities for social mobility which a degree entailed, especially a Social Sciences degree. So, when I attended the University of Leeds, my degree (BSc Sociology with Quantitative Research Methods) provided me with an awareness of the chance for growth and the social world which surrounds us.
What steps has your career taken since graduating?
Since graduating in July 2026, I have been preparing for a 'mini-masters' course with the University of Leeds, a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, Primary (ages 5 to 11 years; PGCE). Further to this, I am beginning to think of applying for primary education jobs, whilst expanding my horizons to social science related fields, such as statistics, finance and policy.
Which skills do you now use at work that you wish you’d learned more about during your degree?
Though I have not started my course as of yet, a component to my postgraduate course is a poster presentation element which contributes to 30 masters-level credits, I believe this would have given me the fundamental preparation, presentation and design skills necessary for my upcoming master's assignment.
What career advice would you give to current or prospective students?
Do not panic – when I arrived at the University of Leeds, I had minimal ideas of what a future career for me would look like. Throughout my degree, I selected discovery and optional modules which explored my areas of interest, such as the Sociology of Education/Childhood studies. Further to this, I volunteered as a Course Representative, a Media and Publicity Officer for the Neurodivergent Society and I became an ambassador for open days. The best advice I can provide is: make the most of your university opportunities. Become a course or faculty representative, find your area of interest, take this as the chance to do the best you can, both personally and professionally. Make your mark at the university.
How excited are you for the new Student Futures Board? What role can it play in supporting our students?
Thank you for this brilliant opportunity! I am incredibly passionate about widening participation in education, and I believe this is a supportive stepping stone for the wider success of students of all backgrounds at the University of Leeds.