NEWSROOM

Staff Profile: Gemma Bramwell, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Engagement Coordinator

25 October 2022

At the heart of the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) is a community of innovative thinkers, problem solvers, and change-makers. CIE’s Engagement Coordinator Gemma Bramwell helps connect University of Auckland students, staff, and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem with learning opportunities to enable them to realise their potential.

Tell us a little about your background  

I graduated from the University of Auckland in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Communications and Psychology. My first job out of uni was at The Salvation Army writing stories to support fundraising campaigns. I had always been interested in marketing but thought it might be tricky to get into without the degree, so when I saw the Engagement Coordinator role going at CIE and realised I had gained a lot of the necessary experience from my first job, I decided to go for it.   

What does your role as Innovation and Entrepreneurship Engagement Coordinator involve?  

A few things… CIE runs a range of programmes as well as over 400 co-curricular equipment training sessions and workshops each year. I work to promote the opportunities CIE has on offer to students and staff. This includes marketing to recruit participants for specific programmes and creating weekly event newsletters to keep our community of interested students and staff in the loop with what is coming up at CIE.  I also put together CIE’s monthly news newsletter for the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This includes articles that I write throughout the month, and are published in our website Newsroom, alongside articles written by others. These are often about ventures that students, staff or alumni are working on, or write-ups on CIE programmes that have recently taken place. As well as this, I coordinate photo shoots and other content creation and look after CIE’s Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.  

What is your favourite part of the job?  

I enjoy the variation of my role and having a supportive, forward-thinking manager who is open to suggestions and testing new things out. I love learning about the ventures that students, alumni, or staff are working on and seeing the impact of CIE’s programmes. Managing CIE’s Instagram excites me, and I’m looking forward to working on it more next year.   

Why is it important to engage students, staff and the wider community in innovation and entrepreneurship?  

Innovation and entrepreneurship are key to solving problems and creating a better future. Supporting students to have an entrepreneurial mindset enables them to leverage their skills and knowledge to create the world they want to live in.   

When you’re not working, what would we find you doing?  

Going on trips to the beach, trying out new places to eat, cooking something up in the kitchen, watching a good series (recent favorites are The Crown and Our Great National Parks), or adding another layer of paint to a painting I will likely never finish.