Portsmouth Business School
Linguist makes leap to corporate conscience
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:09:00 BST
A languages student who switched to studying law and corporate governance has been honoured for being the best-performing student in her class at the University of Portsmouth.
Teresa Holmes, 23, graduated with a BA in Spanish and Italian last year and then embarked on a Master’s degree in corporate governance and law at Portsmouth Business School.
She now has a job working as a trainee company secretarial assistant.
Unlike many of her contemporaries she discovered that the work of a ‘company secretary’ was a world away from the stereotype of Miss Moneypenny tapping at her keyboard.
Teresa said: “I chose the LLM Corporate Governance and Law/GRAD ICSA course because it seemed like the perfect way to enter into a professional career.
“When I first started university I had no idea what type of career I wanted to pursue. However, during the second year of my languages degree I was introduced to the notion of corporate social responsibility and it was from this that the link to corporate governance and company secretarial work arose.”
Making the leap from languages to law was not always easy, especially as most of her peers on the Master’s course had already studied law or business for three years.
She said: “It was certainly a challenge; however I wouldn’t say that it was necessarily any more challenging than a Masters in languages would have been.
“Juggling a Masters with a part time job wasn’t always easy. However, I was fortunate to be awarded a scholarship which meant that my tuition fees were considerably reduced. As a result, I was able to lower the number of hours I worked during coursework and exam times allowing me to focus on my studies.
“But I have been very lucky. I got a temporary job as an admin assistant working on a company secretarial project last summer. I was later invited back and offered a job as a trainee when I’d finished my dissertation. I have been with the company ever since and am really enjoying it.”
Teresa was the highest performing student on the University’s LLM programmes and was awarded a prize from the Worshipful Company of Chartered Secretaries’ Charitable Trust a few hours before she graduated.
Her Master’s tutor Charles Barker said: “All credit must go to Teresa. She was the best performing student and one of only two distinctions. She came from an entirely different discipline to many of her fellow students and yet managed to finish the course at the top of her class.
“She is an inspiration to people anxious about doing a law degree after studying languages, humanities or social sciences because she shows it can be done and the personal and professional rewards are very clear.”