Skills Academy names its first young ambassador

Sheffield, UK - Chloe Richards has become a young ambassador to one of the regional boards of the National Skills Academy Process Industries- one of five young ambassadors being recruited to the Academy’s boards in key process industries hotspots around the UK.. Her role on the Academy’s West Midlands Regional Skills Board is to give youngsters a voice on careers in the region’s polymer, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, which employ 28,000 people in the region.

Richards is a building services engineer at CEL International in Coventry, which provides specialist services to the process industries and numbers Dow Corning, PolymerLatex and GSK on its client list. She has also taken on roles as an ambassador for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network (STEMNET), as well as the Building Services Sector Skills Council, and was recently nominated for the European Construction Institute) Young Professional of the Year award.

“I was keen to join the board as the sector can sometimes be seen as quite a ‘grey-haired’ profession, full of men in suits,” said the NSAPI ambassador. “If young people have more of a voice and some input and understanding of what goes on, it would actually encourage more of them to consider a career in the industry … “As the youngest person on the board, I have a huge task ahead of me. Training is often overlooked as an optional add-on as opposed to a necessity in helping the sector grow, and I want to help the board change those perceptions among the employer base.
“Since young people are undoubtedly the future of our industry, I’m hoping to highlight the importance of maintaining a high level of skills, as well as encouraging more young people, especially women, to come into this massively important sector.”

Phil Jones, the Academy’s CEO, added: “We’re very excited about having Chloe on the regional board. Having a young perspective on the skills issues and how we bring more young people into the industries will help us develop a stronger action plan in terms of what we deliver for local employers. It can be quite difficult for young people new into the industry to relate to the board members who are mostly at the top of their careers; Chloe’s appointment is a step in the right direction to change that.”