Nikki Ashley

Where You Live: Worthing
Company: Academy internet
Job Title: Learning and training specialist

Describe your job/role?
There are two major parts to this job. Firstly providing training within a training room in a traditional setup. Secondly; e-learning and designing e-learning courses, mostly within an instructional design element. This includes the structure of the piece of learning and how it is going to work. Then I work together with designers and animators to finish the final product.

What is the best thing about your job?
This job has a combination of the best parts of the jobs I have had before. I’ve had jobs where I loved doing the work, others where I got to learn new things or worked with a great team. What I like most about this job is that it has all of these attributes.

What attracted you to it?
Training is my background and after having worked with the director of Academy Internet before, it was suggested that I should take on some of the e-learning roles. For me this meant starting a new learning curve since I have not worked within that area before. There was a need for e-learning designers and my experience within training meant that we could bridge the technology gap, this worked very well.

What schools did you go to and what subjects did you take?
My senior school was the Queen Elizabeth School, which is one of the oldest schools in the country. The A-levels I took was English, French, Latin and General Studies.

What was your favourite subject and why?
My favourite subject was English. It was the subject which felt like it was the least hard work. I loved both the language part and the literature part. The idea that you learn best when you are enjoying yourself has stuck with me and I still try to apply to that all the learning programs I do.

Did you go to University / College and if so what did you study?
I went to Southampton University and I did English and Philosophy.

What was your first job?
My first full time job, after various restaurant and babysitting jobs, was as a play development officer with the Plymouth City Council Scheme. It was within a resource centre providing support for children’s organisations such as Cubs or Brownies. This was where I first started training, I was asked to put together a course about caring for abused children.

What does your career path look like?
I have worked within training most of the time, mainly in the insurance industry but also including management skills, customer care and training the trainer, which I still do a lot of today. The move into the more technological part of the training has only come in the last five years.

Which women have inspired and influenced your career?
There are two women who have inspired me in two totally different ways.
Firstly it is my mother who had to take on grotty part time jobs while raising her children. The jobs she took on were very rarely recognised in terms of the contribution, she never got the same respect one would get in a full time job or when you have fancy title. I think she always got frustrated, both because she never got any recognition and because she always had to take on horrible jobs to be able to fit it around the family.
In my job I have been able to mix both a job which offers the respect I deserve, with the ability to give my family the support it needs.
The other big inspiration for me is my best friend’s mother who came from Latvia as a refugee, owning only what she could carry on her back. She still managed to work her way up to become a successful dentist. It just comes to show that women too can work their way up and become successful. These two women’s carer paths are very different but they have both inspired me in different ways.

What would you say is your strongest attribute/s?
My strongest attribute is that I am very passionate about my job. It means that I put a lot of effort, energy and time into my job because it is what I really want to do and because I want to do it well.

What do you think is the most exciting/interesting thing about working in the digital media industry?
For me and the job I have, it is the fact that many of the old and traditional rules are disappearing. This means that work is becoming much more about doing the job instead of looking the part. It is more important to be effective, producing something and making it happen rather than keeping all the traditional work values.

What advice would you give to people who consider entering the digital media industry?
Because the jobs are losing more of their traditional values it is important to look around for new roles that are emerging within the sector. Rather than going to the careers officer who can tell you how to become a dentist or a lawyer, you should find out about the new roles within the jobs that are available today. There is a much bigger chance of matching what you can do with a job role. So just go out there and research, and try to match your skills and with what you want to be.