Profile
Kathryn Walker
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About Me:
I live in Kendal with my young family. I’m a Process Engineer by day and (when I get a chance!) enjoy yoga, fell walking, travelling and cooking.
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My kids are 7 and almost 4, so that doesn’t leave masses of time free for me around work and ferrying them about just now! But we try and get out into the lake district as much as we can (we are lucky to live just down the road!). I fit in a few gym classes, swimming and yoga. I really love to travel, although COVID and kids has slowed that down a bit just now. We lived in India for a year, spent 12 weeks in South America and I can’t wait to show the kids more of the world!
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
I work to improve safety in our factory and reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing medicines.
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I work for a pharmaceutical company on a site that makes the active ingredient in an antibiotic. This involves large volumes of flammable solvents and powders that can explode if you make a cloud of dust and it were to meet a spark/flame etc. We have lots of safety features that control these risks and make it safe to operate. Part of my job is to make sure we are as safe as we can be, helping make improvements and training people so they understand what is keeping them safe and what can go wrong.
The other half of my job is about sustainability and the environment. I spend some time measuring how much gas/electricity/water, materials and cleaning products etc. we use and working with lots different people to reduce this. Sometimes it is as simple as reminding people to switch things off or recycle, and sometimes it is about changing how the manufacturing process works.
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My Typical Day:
I usually get to work about 8.30am, have various morning meetings to catch up on what’s been going on (the factory operates 24/7). Other than that, I don’t think 2 days are the same (which I love). Meetings with on site people (but also people across the company at other factories), training people, updating documents, checking things in the factory, answering people’s questions. I usually leave about 5 and head home to feed the kids etc.
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I drive to work (I wish I could cycle but it’s about a 40 minute drive ☹), on Monday’s I work from home and pick the kids up from school. About once a month I go over to the Secondary site (where they turn our active ingredient into tablets) as I look after sustainability improvements over there too.
Improving safety and reducing our impact on the environment involves everyone so I spend a lot of time with the operators who run the plant, the engineers and technicians who keep it running, the people who test the product and lots of others to make these improvements happen.
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Education:
Ipswich High School
Colchester Sixth Form College
University of Bath
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Qualifications:
GCSEs – separate sciences, geography, art,
A-levels – Physics, Maths, Chemistry and General Studies
Master’s degree in Biochemical Engineer with a placement year. At the time it was called an integrated Masters, so no bachelors degree, straight to a masters which was 4 years with an extra year working in industry.
I did my placement year at a research company who made activated carbon!
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Work History:
Process Engineer (what they usually call a chemical engineer when you get to industry!) at AstraZeneca (a large pharmaceutical company). I worked in the lab and small scale factory developing ways to manufacture new medicines.
Process Engineer – PM Group (on a project to design a milk factory in the Netherlands, although I was based in Birmingham!)
GSK Ulverston (another large pharmaceutical company) – Process Engineer, then Process Safety Engineer and now Environmental and Process Safety Engineer.
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Current Job:
Environmental and Process Safety Engineer
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Employer:
GSK
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My Interview
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What did you want to be after you left school?
Something that involved chemistry but wasn't a chemist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No, I was a fairly boring and shy!
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
Travel blogger! Or maybe calculating and reducing carbon footprints or something like that.
What's your favourite food?
Chocolate!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I wish I was more confident and there were more hours in a day!
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