Life Beyond Pembroke - The Alumni Speakers Series

Pembroke has over 10,000 alumni who have gone on to be successful in a wide range of careers and industries. Our Life Beyond Pembroke programme includes talks, workshops and speed-networking events and is run by the Development and Alumni Office. Our aim is help students make connections with our amazing and eclectic network of alumni, by welcoming them back to the College to talk about their careers since graduating, offer practical advice and answer questions from current students and recent graduates.

Our sessions for Michaelmas Term 

Sunday 5 November - Speed Networking  10:45am -2pm Book your place 

This event is an opportunity for all Pembroke College Students to talk to Pembroke Alumni from a range of sectors for a few minutes at a time. A chance to learn valuable networking skills, make new contacts and find out more about the range of careers and roles available.

The event will start with tea, coffee and biscuits and a welcome from the Master followed by an optional one hour interactive workshop - Networking - How do I do it successfully? with Pembroke Alumnus, Guy Doza (2020)

Guy Doza is a speechwriter, author, and public affairs consultant. He started his career as a political researcher and speechwriter in the Houses of Parliament and has since worked with a range of governments across Europe and Central Asia. 

Outside of politics, he is a senior associate with the European Speechwriter Network and works as a leadership and public affairs consultant for a range of clients such as the International Criminal Courts, FGS Global, and NISA (a network of schools in India which is responsible for the education of over 20 million children). 

 He has a habit of giving important things silly titles: his book, How to Apologise for Killing a Cat: Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion, was released in 2022; and his TEDx talk, Defence Against the Dark Arts, was delivered in 2019. 

He lives in Cambridge, is often seen in the queue for Jack’s Gelato, and coaches the debate team at his local state school. 

Alumni will then meet students individually for face to face sessions.

Other participating alumni as follows: 

Libby Duckett (1987)

Libby read Engineering at Pembroke, graduating in 1990. She then worked for the Ministry of Defence, joining the Civil Service Fast Stream, completing the associated 5 year training period and being promoted to Grade 7. She left formal employment in 1996 following the birth her first child and started a property business.

When her youngest child entered 6th form, she returned to university, studying a Global Health Masters at Southampton University - looking at the health of the world through the lens of numbers/statistics.  She graduated in 2019, determined to find a way to use her skills to make a genuine difference to the lives of people in sub-Saharan Africa, which she see as the world’s most deprived region.

In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, she joined the Cambridge-based, international charity CAMFED as an intern, and has since been promoted to Senior Officer. She works in the Impact team, measuring and reporting on CAMFED's programmes to support girls through their education and beyond in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana

Lucy Emerson (1997)

Lucy Emmerson is Chief Executive of the Sex Education Forum, a national charity committed to improving Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) for the benefit of children and young people. Lucy leads the running of the charity, convening stakeholders to influence Government policy and share practice and evidence, as well as monitoring the provision of RSE in schools in England, using tools such as annual young people’s RSE poll. 

Lucy’s career in this field spans two decades. She has been at the forefront of campaigns for mandatory, inclusive and evidence-based RSE, and is regularly called on to inform both the policy and research agenda and to speak in the media. She has given evidence in Parliament, most recently to the Women and Equalities Select Committee (May 2023).

Lucy began her career in the charity sector with a volunteer placement teaching about HIV and AIDS in rural Zimbabwe. She later worked for Brook, the young people’s sexual health charity. She has a Masters in Development Management from the Open University and studied English Literature as an undergraduate at Pembroke College.

Will Duckett (1987)

Will graduated from Pembroke in 1990 having studied a BA degree in engineering at Pembroke College.  Following a short stint working for national parks in Zimbabwe counting black rhino he joined a civil engineering consultancy in London in 1991 called Maunsell, now Aecom.  For the first four years’ of his career he worked on the Second Severn Crossing initially in the design office and then 20 months on site.  He was then involved in the design of a number of major cable stayed bridges around the world including a short stint in Hong Kong working on the Kap Shui Mun cable stayed bridge to the new airport. He also worked on the design of advanced composite structures including the longest glass reinforced polymer bridge in Aberfeldy Scotland.

Following Maunsell he joined a consultancy in Southampton called Gifford in 2002 which has now been taken over by Ramboll which is a major global Danish consultancy.  At Ramboll he has mainly worked on rail projects, with a focus on delivering major infrastructure projects, including the 3-car enhancement of DLR for the 2012 Olympics, the Bermondsey Dive Under for the Thameslink project, a number of bridges in the Reading Station Area Redevelopment project and non-linear FE analysis of Network Rail bridges.  Recently he has been delivering various projects for HS2 Phase 1, including leading the Enabling Works North contract and the design of various bridges using Modern Methods of Construction.

Matt Mahmoudi (2016)

Matt is a lecturer, researcher, and organizer. He’s been leading the ‘Ban the Scan’ campaign, Amnesty International’s research and advocacy efforts on banning facial recognition technologies and exposing their uses against racialized communities, from New York City to the occupied Palestinian territories. He was the inaugural Jo Cox PhD scholar at the University of Cambridge, studying digital urban infrastructures as new frontiers for racial capitalism, where he remains an Affiliated Lecturer in Sociology. His work appears in The Sociological Review, International Political Sociology, Digital Witness (Oxford Uni. Press, 2020), Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence (Haymarket, 2024), and in his forthcoming book, Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control (Uni. Of California Press, 2023).

Bayan Parvizi (2005)

Bayan was educated at Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge and has an MA (Cantab) in Arabic, Persian and Middle Eastern Studies and an MPhil in Middle Eastern nation-building between the two world wars. After graduating, he joined the Civil Service FastStream in early 2011. His last role was heading up diplomats responsible for National Security and Defence matters at the British Embassy in Berlin (2018-2023). Having left the Civil Service in August 2023, he is now a freelance consultant working on advisory and consulting projects that best help public and private sector clients position themselves in challenging and testing times.

Bayan speaks Persian and German in addition to his degree in Arabic. He is currently completing a third master’s on Corruption and Governance at the University of Sussex and holds a Public Leadership Credential from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and two young daughters.

Drew Mecham (2009)

Originally from the US, Drew completed an MPhil in Middle East and Islamic studies, then spent a year in Jordan as a Fulbright Fellow. After returning to the UK he pivoted from the academic path and joined BP’s Supply Chain grad scheme, working initially in its Iraq business, then in a global capital projects role.

 Drew’s career has taken him around the globe, and he’s keen to talk to students interested in working abroad and the joys (and pitfalls) of working across cultural boundaries. He is also passionate about the value arts degrees bring to business and would love to discuss how to best articulate that value to potential employers.   

Mischa Foxell (2006)

Mischa is a conflict specialist with experience in national security, conflict prevention and humanitarian response, including in Ukraine, West and Central Africa, and the Middle East. She is a Deputy Director in the Cabinet Office’s International Affairs Unit, which provides foreign policy advice to the National Security Adviser and the Prime Minister. She is on loan to the Cabinet Office from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, where in her most recent roles she ran the British Government's aid programmes in Syria, Iraq and North East Nigeria. Before she worked for the government she worked for NGOs in Cameroon and the UK. 

Laura Upstone (2015)

Is a Senior Medical Writer at Cambridge, which is one of 13 agencies and consultancies at Prime Global Medical Communications. Cambridge was formerly known as Cambridge Medical Communications, which was acquired by Prime Global in 2020.

In the final year of her degree, Laura began searching for jobs after deciding that she did not want to continue with laboratory research. She came across the field of Medical Communications (MedComms), which appeared to be the perfect combination of science and creativity. After meeting representatives from Cambridge Medical Communications at a university careers fair, she applied, attended an interview, and was offered a job. To this day, she still works with the people she met at the careers fair!

Since 2018, she has worked her way up from Medical Communications Associate, to Medical Writer, and Senior Medical Writer, and is, currently, working towards Associate Scientific Director. Over the past 5 years, she has collaborated with various pharmaceutical companies and biotechs; she has delivered projects ranging from review manuscripts, posters, and white papers, to infographics, animations, and scientific congress presentations; and has worked across a variety of therapy areas including neurology (epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression), respiratory disease (cough, allergy), and haematology (anaemia, iron overload).

Alison Schuldt (1995)