As Needhams 1834 is passionate about resilience we are very aware that the next generation of resilience professionals will be developing new ideas and concepts of risk and resilience. Therefore, Needhams decided to capitalise on the academic credentials of its staff to assist in shaping the future. To this end we have annually sponsored and academically supervised a student/intern.
We are incredibly proud of the success of our students and outlined below are some vignettes of their success.
Student 1: Kate Bertagnolli (Canadian)
As part of her academic course, Kate came over from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada to spend a few months on attachment with Needhams. During this time, she worked incredibly hard as researcher and developed her skills in resilience by designing several scenario-based exercises as well as being made to author an academic article in preparation for her return to the university where she had to present a portfolio of the work she had done on attachment with Needhams.
On her return to Canada her hard work with Needhams was recognised by the university who selected her as one of the top six students of the year from the whole University.
She now works for Deloitte in Ontario and focuses on the intricacies of supply chain issues.
Student 2: Julia Lobnig (Austrian)
Julia was introduced to Needhams as being one of Dr Gianluca Pescarolli’s best MSc student at University College London (UCL). A native Austrian with an economics and political science background, she was studying on UCLs Masters in Risk Disaster and Resilience and had a specific interest in the developing social unrest potential following the pandemic.
Julia worked with Needhams on several projects as was academically supervised by the Needhams team specifically by Dr Murray Lawton-Dauie, Dr Chris Needham-Bennett and Needhams director Andrew MacLeod MSc BA. Aside from excellent analysis work for Needhams she also completed an excellent thesis on social unrest and was awarded an A+ grade for her MSc.
The excellence of her work, bear in mind it was written in her second language English, was also recognised by the Corporate Insurance and Risk’ business continuity awards where she won Student of the Year.
Julia returned to Austria where she now works for a credit risk organisation in Vienna.
Student 3: Charles Masser (British)
Following Julia’s success with Needhams, UCL asked if we could academically mentor Charles in his MSc masters dissertation which was unusually novel and innovative. The topic was an analysis of the application of blockchain technology, (usually used in cryptocurrencies) to the issue of supply chain security, audit and validation.
This was a complex and difficult topic as the concept itself was so new that its potential benefits and applications had to be explained to many of the participants or subjects in the study.
Charles engaged with several participants and produced an excellent mixed methods piece of research. The quality of his research which was once again supervised by the Needhams team was awarded an MSc with Distinction by the University.
Charles now works as a business analyst in London.
Summary: Needhams 1834 is exceptionally proud of the success of these three students, and we feel that by helping students in this fashion we are contributing to the develop of resilience practice for the future. Not only have they hopefully benefitted from their time with experienced consultants but also we have definitely learned from them and massively enjoyed their enthusiasm and seeing their academic development mature during they work with us.
