When a business reaches its 20th birthday, there are naturally lots of stories to tell, and in the run up to our birthday, I've loved hearing some of the memories from Fiona Lund, Lucy Baker and Susie Sinden, who have been around since the early days.
My own journey only started a couple of years ago...I first joined Brouha whilst studying Business Management with Marketing in Bristol. I was given the opportunity to work three days a week as an intern alongside university and my waitressing job, to get some experience of the “real world”.
Looking back, Brouha came along at quite an important time for me. Although I was enjoying my degree, I was still figuring out what life would look like after uni as I’d never had a set plan for what I wanted to do. Before starting my degree, I actually wanted to be a speech and language therapist, which is a whole other world in itself!
Studying marketing initially sparked my interest in the industry, but it wasn't until I started working at Brouha that I got to see first-hand how creativity and strategy behind communications can help shape brand positioning, support client objectives and contribute to brand growth.
Having that experience gave me a bit more direction and, with it, more motivation, and that's when my grades started to improve, and by my final year I ended up graduating with a first, which I was incredibly proud of. Obviously, there were lots of late nights and many, many, many hours in the library, but I do think the confidence I gained from working at Brouha played a part in helping me get there, and I’ll always be grateful to Fiona, Susie and the rest of the Brouha team for giving me that opportunity.
Since then, it's been a bit of a whirlwind...I've gone back to uni, graduated, come back to Brouha, travelled around South America, and now I'm back full time.
I’ve travelled up and down the country, met clients I had only previously known over Teams and got to know the industries we work in better. And my first proper introduction to one of the industries we work in, social housing, was at the National Housing Maintenance Forum (NHMF) Conference and Awards. One thing I didn't know about when I joined Brouha was just how big the world of conferences, awards and events is across the sectors we work in, which, by the way, is one of the really fun parts of the job.
I’m still very much the baby of the team, and I feel very fortunate to work alongside Fiona, Lucy, Susie, Dominic Cassidy and Amy Goddard. You know that expression ‘you’re only as good as the company you keep’? Between them, they have so much experience, knowledge and talent that I'm constantly learning from them all. It's fast-paced and no two days look the same, but that's what makes things interesting.
My Brouha journey might only make up a couple of its 20 years, but they've been important ones for me... I got my first big girl job and found my feet in something that was completely new to me.
Happy 20th Birthday Brouha – what a fantastic achievement and a lovely milestone to be part of.
