Newsletters

 

Alumni Newsletter

July 2014

Summer is now in full swing and so too are the plans for our 30th Anniversary Gala Events in New York and London. Now is the time to book your tickets/tables to ensure your place at this grand Mountbatten anniversary celebration!

Also in this issue we have two Entrepreneurial Alumni, a special Alumni discount offer and a truly Mountbatten wedding (it seems New York May 08 was a bumper intake for MI romance!), plus the regular sections.

Huge congratulations to our Alumni who are attending their SMU graduation ceremony this week at the beautiful Westminster Cathedral. We know you will have a lovely day and enjoy the Mountbatten graduation lunch afterwards - we look forward to seeing the photos!

30th Anniversary Event Update

Following our posting on facebook, in case you were wondering, we have a massive 522 Alumni members turning 30 this year! Is this you?! Join us in celebrating the big 3-0, one birthday you won't forget!

Several of us from the London office were invited recently to a sample menu tasting at Merchant Taylors', the London event venue. We were extremely well looked after and the food was delicious! You're in for a treat!

Go to our Anniversary website for full details.

Mountbatten Wedding Announcement

We are delighted to announce that earlier this month Gregor Hopkins and Kate Larpent (May 2008 - New York) got married. Apparently they are the third married couple from this particular intake! In Gregor's words: "Mountbatten is the reason we're together... if nothing else, Mountbatten is a fabulous dating agency!" We would like to wish them many congratulations and hope to catch up with them, post Honeymoon, at our Anniversary event in London in October.

 

Alum of the month

Mark Harrison
August 2007 - London

"I'm currently running business development for an innovative ridesharing start-up called Bandwagon in New York City... I'm really proud of what we're doing... We make it really easy and fun for people to share rides and split the fare - reducing, cost, congestion & emissions in the process... If you know of anywhere with long cab lines, or know of anyone working in sports, please feel free to point them our way!"
Read full story
.


New Alumni Ambassador Programme

Do you want to develop your presentation and leadership skills? Mountbatten is launching a new Alumni Ambassador Programme. We are looking to recruit keen and enthusiastic Alumni who would like to share their Mountbatten experience and story with their universities and offer feedback and advice to interested future participants. If you are interested please contact Jo Harvey, Alumni Relations Director.

August 13 Intake Completion & Awards Ceremony - London

On Wednesday 9th July, interns, staff and guests gathered for the August 13 intake awards ceremony at The Brewery in Moorgate. The evening began with a drinks reception, which was followed by the main ceremony. Gary Ball (Deputy Director General) presented the awards to candidates, while speeches were given by our alumna Charlotte Kholmann (August 2008 - London) who is the Co-founder of a new start-up company Spleat; John Machulak (MBA) and Frances Monroy (PGC). The speakers entertained the audience, sharing their experiences and a little wisdom learned along the way, with Charlotte Kholmann being able to relate her subsequent career directly to her experiences of being on the London programme. Other staff and guests included Dr David Twigg (Academic Director), Dr Geoff Paul (St Mary's University), Dr Johanna Lindemann and Femke van der Veer (Faculty). There were company representatives from Barclays, UBS, RBS, Thomson Reuters and JP Morgan. Also career representatives from City University London. Check out the full details & Photo album.

Entrepreneurial Alumni

Jonny Hough (January 1999 - New York) set up his own company JLHough Ltd two years ago. He has been a Web Developer and Digital Project Manager since finishing Mountbatten in January 2000, and most of that has been on staff at design and advertising agencies. There is a growing network of self-employed specialists that are brought in to London's agencies to help manage difficult projects, difficult clients or simply just to help deliver spikes in work.

He explains... "The advantage of this approach for me is that I'm working for myself, the re-numeration is better and I have the flexibility to take time off in between projects. My bread and butter is delivering large digital campaigns and websites for big companies (Durex, Blackberry, Flora, that type of thing) but I also compliment that with smaller projects for local businesses and word-press sites for a couple of smaller agencies. I learned to code HTML at night school in Harlem during my Mountbatten year in 1999 when the internet was really taking off. I remember there was one computer in the office that had 'the internet' and I'd have to hang around until everybody had left for the day to get on it and do my homework. It seems like a world away now but such a great skill to learn and my experience in New York at my placement company (Park Avenue Health Care) had convinced me it was a good industry to get into.

My future plans include another year of trading on my own - much in the same fashion as the last two years - at some point I may try to expand, but for the moment I like not having staff to worry about. Setting up a limited company is relatively straightforward and if you've got the right experience and contacts, the rewards and lifestyle are great.
"

David Marshall (September 1997 - New York) is the founder and managing director of Marshall ACM, which develops online training on a number of business critical subjects for corporate and public sector organisations. Clients include most universities in the UK, Hitachi, Volkswagen and The Bank of England. He set the company up in 2003 at the time a new law concerning race relations required all UK organisations to do diversity training. David invested 5K in building an e-learning site on diversity training.

"When I got my first job in consultancy in London I found the atmosphere of long meetings, office politics and people covering their backs a bit constraining. This was in stark contrast to the small organisation I worked for in New York during my Mountbatten internship, but I got the experience of working very closely with some very driven people. This meant when I was back in London I had (unknowingly) developed a more entrepreneurial mind-set, which if you had known me in my Mountbatten years, no one could have guessed." Read full story.

Alumni Offers

To help you look the part for the 30th Anniversary Gala celebrations, T.M. Lewin & Sons Ltd, which operates on both sides of the Atlantic will be giving a discount. Michael Boyle (September 2009 - New York) who works in online marketing at T.M. Lewin in London, is delighted that the company will be offering all Mountbattens a 20% discount on hand-finished shirts, suits and silk ties and more from 1st August 2014 until 24th October 2014. Simply enter the code TML4BALL at the online check-out to redeem this offer or use the barcode at one of their stores.

Jobs

There are a number of available positions currently being advertised on our alumni website, including an Account Manager for ClearBooks plc in London, plus a number of other roles in New York and DC for the Foreign Commenwealth Office, including a GREAT Campaign Coordinator amongst others. For full details of all of these and other available positions, please go to our alumni website.

We also post the jobs we are alerted to on the Mountbatten Alumni Association group on LinkedIn. Make sure you join the group to get alerts of new job postings.

Vicki McCordall: vmccordall@mountbatten.org
Jo Harvey: jharvey@mountbatten.org
web: http://alumni.mountbatten.org