KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Panellist

Gemma Kenyon Director of Careers and

Employability

City, University of London

Gemma has been working in higher education careers services since 2009 and has been leading careers services since 2013. As Director of the City, University of London Careers and Employability department, Gemma leads a team of around 40 staff in functions such as careers guidance, employer engagement, placements, on-site recruitment agency, volunteering and professional mentoring The City Careers and Employability service particularly focuses on delivering employability education in the curriculum, credit bearing professional experience modules, proactive and intensive graduate support and targeted support for student communities under-represented in professional employment. The service is underpinned by the thorough use of data at all points of the student and graduate journey

Gemma also leads the development and implementation of City’s institutional employability strategy, including the Career Activation Programme according to which all undergraduate programmes have career focus education and professional experience as part of the core curriculum Gemma became the AGCAS Integrating Employability Board Director in March 2023.

PANELLIST Annie Yonkers

Future Skills Employability Manager

Kingston University

Panellist

Dr. Dickon Copsey

College of Social Science Employabiliy Officer

University of Glasgow

Dr Dickon Copsey has been leading the CoSS employability team since 2009 and has established innovative curricular and co-curricular employability initiatives which support students to reflect on and develop their broader transferable skills. Since 2010, his flagship Graduate Skills Programme has been supporting approximately 300 students per year across the College of Social Sciences to reflect on and articulate the key skills and graduate attributes that will facilitate their entry into rewarding careers In 2012, he founded the ILM certificated Professional Skills Programme, which worked with approximately 400 students per year to develop their professional skills and workplace readiness With the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, Dickon led a transformation of their skills programmes In its inaugural year, the College Employability Programme saw over 3000 students enrol in its certificated skills courses which are embedded alongside credit-bearing courses

The Employability Office is supported by a team of student tutors and interns, who coordinate employability communications, industry speaker series, and co-deliver on the College Employability Programme Working with colleagues in the Careers Service, the Alumni team and the Adam Smith Business School, their innovative work with students was recognised by the CASE Circle of Excellence Award (2019) Dr Copsey has been involved in a range of funded action-research projects to develop university-wide toolkits for academic staff and students to engage with graduate attributes, including the recent Erasmus+ Employability in Programme Development project.

Tenacious and relentlessly curious, Annie is always searching for new things to learn and new ways to make connections Annie supports academic colleagues with incorporating equitable and authentic personal and professional development learning at Kingston University, where she completed her MA in Communication Design in 2019 Annie's research investigated how to take elements of design education and design pedagogy out of the art school and apply them in varied learning environments to cultivate compassion, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking skills