Digital Empowerment Manager
Birmingham City Council

Nicky S

00:01 My name’s Nicky S and a digital empowerment manager and I work for Digital Birmingham which is part of the Birmingham city council. Digital Birmingham is around bringing the benefits of digital technologies to the citizens of Birmingham and part of my role really is to ensure that citizens are able to use the technology to adequately engage with services, look at the democracy issues across the city really, but just to make technology work for them really.

00:28 I’m a trained project manager so I’m Prince 2 qualified and obviously I work within the area of Digital Birmingham so within IT previous to that I was working within regeneration so education training re-skilling long term unemployed getting them retrained and back into work basically and I suppose that’s where my passion with technology started really within that field.

00:53 Although I work within the field of IT I’m not a techie in the traditional sense of the word, where I am a project manager it just so happens that I work within the field of IT so that’s where my experience and qualifications lie.

01:06 I was going down the path of law so I did, I took a legal secretaries course I did a year studying law at college and that was the direction I was going in worked for a solicitors for a short time and doing conveyancing, really found it wasn’t to my liking and kind of diverted from there really.

01:27 I feel every path you go down you go down for a reason and you know there are benefits as well as you know it may not be your ideal choice but you do learn things along the way which do help you further on down the line as well.

01:40 My dad started off as a chef he’s now an electrical engineer so very much hands on and my mum was working for Severn Trent basically doing customer accounting and large accounts for Severn Trent water.

01:56 I never felt as though I was in you know an normal family so there was nothing that I ever felt that I lacked from, OK I probably didn’t get you know the 2 holiday, 2 foreign holidays a year and certain other advantages but at the time I didn’t feel as though I was missing out on anything and, it’s only once actually coming through that I can appreciate how much my mum did actually you know possibly struggle whether it was financially emotionally and not having a support network there and I can appreciate that now at the time I didn’t feel as though it had any impact on me whatsoever I was able to do what I felt any normal child could and should be able to do at that time.

02:42 I’m a mother of 3 said, my partner works as well he takes the early shift, so he’s usually gone by about 5 I then get up about 6 sort the children out get them off to school the nursery, into work, it feels as though I’ve done a full time job before I’ve even started work in the day, my mother’s been a major inspiration just suppose being a single parent I’ve got a partner, 3 children and I still find it extremely difficult so, you know I hold my hands up to her to raising me alone and actually working as well then it must have been extremely difficult.

03:17 I suppose it’s finding something that you really enjoy doing and I know it’s quite a cliché you’re around that but if you can find something that you’re passionate about that you enjoy doing, to actually try and find a way to incorporate that into your career, or actually the work that you do I think goes some way to having some form of job satisfaction.

03:41 End