On Monday 6th November, Nick Gridelli welcomed Claire Valoti, Former pupil at FHS and General Manager (Northern Europe) at Snapchat to speak to the Sixth Form.
Claire talked about her time at Francis Holland and her professional journey. When she was at FHS she felt she was better at sport than at academic work. She loved her time at school and felt particularly supported by three teachers, Mrs Forde, Mrs Drummond and Ms Last. She emphasised the importance of embracing what you are good at, connecting with people and finding your champions – people who believe in you and who make you feel good about yourself and your abilities.
Claire studied politics at Nottingham University (despite not achieving the A level grades she had hoped for) and graduated in 2000. She applied for graduate schemes but had no offers, so she took a job in a small media agency, buying internet space. It was the beginning of the growth in digital and she was able to learn a lot and progress quickly. She then moved to Facebook and, subsequently, Snapchat, where she works with external brands.
Claire urged the sixth form to think about their working environment and to follow what they are passionate about. She shared her belief that if you donĀt love what you do you wonĀt succeed. She said that life can be unexpectedly hard sometimes but that we can learn from setbacks.
She feels lucky to work at Snapchat, working with a huge variety of people from the engineers who create lenses to cool brands in Europe and in America.
Her three top tips are to:
Ā Work hard
Ā Care more
Ā Love what you do
The Sixth Form were delighted that Claire had brought along some Snapchat Āgoody bagsĀ, the first of which was given to a sixth former who had an astonishing Snapchat score of over 440,000.
Thank you so much to Claire for coming in and giving such an interesting (and exciting!) talk.
