The Alumni Journeys webinar series is back for a fourth season! For the 2024/2025 academic year, we have welcomed back 9 alumni across 7 webinars to share their career journeys so far. From a 2D animator to a career in cyber security, we are excited to share with you a broad range of alumni stories.
Starting in October 2024, we will be premiering a webinar on the first week of every month until May 2025. Each webinar consists of our alumni talking about their time at York St John and life since graduating and is followed by a Q&A with one of our academics.
Make sure to follow our social media pages and sign up to our newsletter to know when our webinars are posted!
Let us introduce you to this year’s speakers:
Farah Jumat – Digital Marketer
Farah graduated from the Master of Business Administration programme at York St John University in 2023. Previously, Farah gained her undergraduate degree in Business and Management from the University of London.
Farah is a passionate and results-driven digital marketing and social media professional with a strong educational foundation and a penchant for creating impactful online experiences. Farah currently works as a Digital Marketer, based in London.
John Ridley – Retired Headteacher and lecturer
John Ridley graduated from Ripon College in 1972 with a Certificate in Education. John’s teaching experience has been in primary and secondary schools and retired in 2009 after twenty-one years as a primary school headteacher.
John completed his MA in Primary Education at the University of York and completed his Doctorate in Education in 2010 with the Open University. John also tutored for the Open University until 2020. Now fully retired, John volunteers for the National Trust and enjoys cycling and sailing.
Balcony Sessions alumni panel
Hear from three generations of the Balcony Sessions. In collaboration with Music Production, we have invited three alumni to campus to talk about their experience of the Balcony Sessions and working in Abbey Road Studios.
In collaboration with BBC Music Introducing in York & Humberside, Balcony Sessions sees budding producers and sound engineers at York St John University gain valuable experience creating content for a weekly broadcast on BBC Radio York.
The panel session consists of Abi Shaw (Class of 2024), Declan Vink (Class of 2022) and John Ricketts (Class of 2023 & 2024).
Matt Stanley – Production coordinator
Matt Stanley graduated from York St John University in 2016 with a degree in Film & Television Production. Matt is a production coordinator for BBC Sport and has worked on the Open, the Ashes and, most recently, the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Alisha Clarke – 2D Animator
Alisha, also known as ‘Kittymonic’ on social media, is a 2D digital animator and artist. Alisha has been drawing ever since she was small and was inspired to try animation after watching the Norwegian band A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ animated music video.
For the last 4 years Alisha has been working for an indie animation studio called SpindleHorse Toons, helping with animation, clean-up and retakes on productions such as Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel.
Melissa Hoggarth – Cyber security analyst
Melissa Hoggarth is a security analyst and PhD student, researching cyber security awareness. Melissa completed her undergraduate degree in Computer Science in 2020, her Masters by Research in Computer Science in 2022 and is currently working on her PhD with York St John.
Melissa has experience as a data and information officer, tutor in cyber security and as a junior security analyst. As well as her career in cyber security, Melissa was a research assistant during her undergraduate degree and visiting lecturer at York St John during her postgraduate degree.
Luca Collina – Company Director
Luca Collina graduated from the MBA Management Consulting programme in 2021 with York St John University and the Robert Kennedy College, Switzerland.
Luca is the funder and director of Transforage, a company providing solutions to business organisations by helping them to establish efficient and results-oriented transitional and transformational strategies.
With over 15 years of experience, Luca is a transformational consultant and specialises in impact growth and digital and business transformation. Luca approaches transformations with an organisational and cross-border culture consideration to guarantee strategies and operational processes integrations effectiveness to improve performances and sustainability.
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We are excited to share with you another great series of alumni stories. We would like to thank all of our alumni who have taken part in this year’s series and the incredible advice they have offered to alumni and students.
If you wish to ask one of our speakers a question after watching a webinar, please email alumni@yorksj.ac.uk. We will forward your questions to the relevant speaker.
We would love to hear from you and share your story. If you would like to be involved in a future webinar series, please email alumni@yorksj.ac.uk. You can also submit a snapshot or be part of the Ask Our Alum initiative by clicking the ‘Submit a Snapshot’ button at the top of the Alumination page.