Alum of the Month

Frances Monroy

Frances Monroy

January 2017

London Program

August 2013 Intake


What and where did you study before your Mountbatten internship?
I studied Marketing and Finance at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ.

What made you apply for the Mountbatten programme?
I didn't have the opportunity to study abroad while in college so I was exploring options that would allow me to move abroad after graduation. I was talking about this with a family a member of mine and she knew someone who did Mountbatten a few years back and suggested I look into it. The program was the perfect opportunity I was looking for and I decided there was no other option other than The Mountbatten Programme!

Describe your sponsor company and your role within it.
I worked for Thomson Reuters as a Marketing Coordinator.
Thomson Reuters is a $13 Billion, global, Fortune 500 company providing information, authoritative insights and integrated tools to consume that information. Thomson Reuters customers span across many industries including financial services, law and corporate tax firms. Thomson Reuters is also known for it's news agency ‘Reuters' which operates as its own entity reporting in nearly 200 locations around the globe delivering impartial, award-winning international and national news coverage.
My Marketing team's role was to help form the value proposition for our Banking and Sell-side research products. I worked between my team, the product managers and the sales team – working on everything from internal events for sales to promote brochures, factsheets and marketing e-mails our team created to help sale, to running webcasts for our external clients where our content experts talked about certain parts of the market that were moving, etc.


What was the highlight/most memorable moment of your working experience during this year?
The highlight of my working experience was working a customer event for Thomson Reuters. Since I was always working on content that was meant for customer facing use it was nice to finally learn first-hand how these customers worked and ask them questions about what they thought we did well and didn't do well.

What was the social highlight/most memorable moment during this year?
A very simple experience but it was after everyone was done moving flats in March when the new intake arrived – around 15-20 of us gradually joined up at a local pub in Islington that had outdoor space. It was the first really nice day in London since the last summer and it was so great to get together with so many people, pretty spontaneously, for a casual afternoon out in the sun.

Please share a little wisdom/philosophy that you acquired during your internship.
Be open to working and connecting with people outside of your normal circles/work teams – you never know what opportunities could arise. I got my current job by volunteering for a project that was outside of my normal day-to-day job.

If you could change anything about your internship, what would it be?
Wouldn't change a thing! It was an awesome experience.

What happened after completing the year - what did you do next?
I moved to New York to continue working for Thomson Reuters. My Marketing team extended me a contract for another 6 months.

Where are you now in your working life and what do you do?
I still work for Thomson Reuters but I've transitioned into our corporate communications and brand team as an Internal Communications Specialist. I manage employee communications for our Americas Sales organization, which includes sales enablement and engagement, ensuring they have the tools they need to be successful. This includes supporting the Head of Americas Sales as well as his leadership team to communicate and articulate the business's priorities.

Do you have any future plans that you would like to realise & what are they (career & social)?
From a career perspective I'm hoping to get more involved in organizational health and effectiveness. I've started to do that a little bit as an extension of my role as I'm training to facilitate corporate culture change workshops – aimed at shifting our culture to help employees manage change and be more open and curious about Thomson Reuters and the work we are trying to achieve.
Socially, things are great! Can't go wrong when you live with two fellow Mountbatten alums in New York City!