As part of the Studio Self-Made team, I co-designed and delivered a series of personal-branding sessions for Sheffield Hallam University's widening participation team, working with learners on their Year 12 Black British Pathway Programme.
The sessions, BRAND: YOU, do something most career input for this age group doesn't: they start from the learner, not the system.
Built on a gamified, game-world structure that meets them where they are, the work moves through what they're good at, what they're interested in, and the impact they want to make. It shows them how those three things combine into a way of presenting themselves that's genuinely theirs.
The purpose of this programme was to help the learner believe they have a story worth telling at all, and the standing to tell it. Personal branding is reputation by design, and a lot of it happens offline, in the rooms we walk into. For a young person weighing up whether university and professional careers are really for them, that shift in self-perception is what opens the door.
It's the same principle that runs through all my work. You don't hand someone confidence. You give them something real to do, they see what they're capable of, and the belief follows.
