Earlier this week we were delighted to welcome back Susannah Jarvis (Class of 2000) to NHEHS as part of our Careers Spotlight series to talk to Year 12. Susannah started her career as a UK and EMEA employment lawyer before moving into international HR for several companies including Head of HR at Airbnb in Europe and Latin America. She told us about some inspiring initiatives at Airbnb which, as well as benefitting society, had a positive business impact too. One such initiative was ‘front line stays’ which were offered during the Covid 19 pandemic to frontline hospital workers so they could stay in Airbnb accommodation for free and minimise the risk of infecting their friends and families. The positive press coverage, and stronger brand recognition, which resulted from this led to higher sales when travel returned. Similarly, Airbnb offered to house 100,000 Ukrainian refugees for free when the war broke out which, again, due to the resulting press coverage, improved sales.

Susannah also gave the students inspiring career and life advice, based on her 20 years working in industry. She advised that, although she was told at school that you could have it all and achieve everything in life, in her experience that can be achieved but only with grit, determination, inner strength and a strong support network. She also shared with the girls that, when thinking about career choice for the future, to ‘follow their bliss,’ in other words, to work out what they’re doing when they lose track of time and where their passions lie. Susannah also reiterated the importance of building great relationships with colleagues as well as having boundaries to build a good work/life balance including hobbies. She left the girls with a final pearl of wisdom – they will fail and mistakes in life, just as she’s done, however, rather than dwell on it, she chooses to rebrand her failures as, ‘taking the scenic route’ and to keep moving forwards.

With such golden nuggets of life advice, unsurprisingly Susannah was bombarded with questions afterwards from the students and staff alike! Thank you so much Susannah for coming in and leaving us with so much to contemplate!