Meet The Team

Laura's Journey

At the age of 16 we are all encouraged to choose the career path we want to take in life, even though at that age we are still just teenagers trying to figure out who we are as a person, let alone choose who we want to be as adults. Luckily for me, I already had a career path in mind – anything to do with sport and P.E. From a young age I was always playing sport which led me into playing football for Coventry City Girls FC in my teenage life. I played as a striker and so it was my job to score the goals. The pressure would inspire me to put my very best into every game. As a team, we always got back up and fought harder the next game, and this is something that will always stay with me. I loved to win, as everyone does, but unfortunately you can’t win every game, and it’s what you learn from those losses that shapes you to become a better player. I learnt a lot from just kicking a ball around a muddy field on a Saturday morning, and I felt this was enough to inspire me to choose it as a career path.

Back at school I made the decision to choose P.E as an A Level. If it was anything like when I played football for CCFC, then I was all set with my future. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. From the very first week, I realised the subject wasn’t what I thought it was, with 90% of it being theoretical.

After thinking it was the end of the world as all teenagers do, I just remember my mum reminding me I had a decision to make because I couldn’t stay in this tantrum forever. Do I carry on doing something I know will be a waste of time, or do I throw myself into something different that I hadn’t considered? I chose the latter. I decided to push myself onto an unknown path and swap my A Level choice to Media Studies. I was hesitant at first because I had little knowledge of Media, but once I got started, I strangely felt like I was in the right place. It wasn’t long until I realised I was surprisingly good at the subject and it was as if I had found my passion, more so than sport (which I thought I would never say).

Cut to the future and here I am, an expert in all things Media and Design with an honour’s degree in the subject from the University of Derby. The pride for myself was overwhelming, and after 3 years of partying hard (apologies, I meant studying!), you’d think I’d want a break. But no, I knew my next goal was to get myself into a real-life job.

After a few months of searching and applying for multiple jobs, I landed myself an interview with a company called Advantia Business Solutions for a Marketing Assistant job. It only took me being at Advantia for 10 minutes to realise that this place had something special, and that was just from the interview. The warm and welcoming feeling I received instantly made me feel at home, which is strange for an interview with people you don’t know. This inspired me to prove my worth to this company even more, and then a few days later I was offered the job, so I must’ve done something right.

Starting the job was fairly scary, but I soon realised that I was a part of something that meant more than your job title, and we all worked together to push projects over the line. This sense of family and commitment for Advantia was something I unknowingly adopted quite quickly, and I just knew I was in the right place to do what I love whilst also helping those we are here for – our members.

You quickly understand that everything you do is solely for the benefit of our members, and here at Advantia we are all a reflection of our members; we are all individual and unique, but come together as one to form a community and family.

Personally, I easily adapted to this mentality from being a football player. Yes, I was in charge of delivering the end result, but without my team behind me, I wouldn’t be able to score any goals in the first place. I’ve now been at Advantia for 6 years, and every day I get to see my creations and designs being showcased throughout multiple platforms, and most important is seeing that our member’s benefit from those creations. It makes me very proud.

I now look back at my younger self and thank her for choosing the different path to what was intended as I know that here is exactly where I am meant to be.