Ingredients
- One qualified vet with a passion for writing
- One team of highly skilled medical and creative copywriters
- Two cats (not essential; adjust number of cats depending on personal taste)
Method
- Take your vet and add your cats, if using. Leave to marinate.
- Fold together with Team RubyDuke.
- Serve and enjoy!
Hello readers! I’m Alicia,* and I’m lucky enough to be a recent addition to the RubyDuke team. I’m here to introduce myself and give you an insight into how I came to be here (RubyDuke, not planet Earth – I’ll spare you the birds and the bees).
As you may have gathered from the recipe above, I’ve always been a big fan of animals, having grown up surrounded by a variety of furry and feathery friends. Pairing this with my favourite school subject, science, training to be a vet seemed like the way forward. Fast forward through a few years of university, and there I was, newly qualified and armed with my very own stethoscope.
I worked in one practice for three years, where I made lifelong friends. I then decided to go ‘lone wolf’ and left the job to start working as a locum vet. I enjoyed seeing the ins and outs of how various different practices worked, with the added advantage of less unsociable hours! Self-employed for the first time and armed with various spreadsheets, my organisational and time management skills levelled up during this time.
However, something wasn’t quite right. While there were aspects of the job I loved (puppies and kittens, for example), it wasn’t a purr-fect fit for me. The world of science writing was calling…
I had been writing on the sidelines for years, initially as a student blogger on a veterinary advice website, then later working on case reports for practice social media pages and the local press. Most definitely a ‘cat person’ (which I’ve been told is my main personality trait), I won the student award for a report for the charity Cats Protection following a work placement there during my training.
My first foray into the human world was as a Science Writer for a research publication, which whetted my appetite for communications work. This job gave me the knack of squirrelling through complex papers to pick out the key information to share, in a format suitable for the relevant audience. A few months ago I was fortunate enough to come across a job advert (on Facbeook, of all places) which gave me the perfect opportunity to broaden my healthcare communication even further…and now I am a proud RubyDuker!
Working as a vet gave me a variety of transferrable skills which come in handy: communication skills and problem solving come to mind, as well as a lot of the lingo being the same! I’m yet to find an aspect of healthcare communications I don’t like, and I doubt I ever will. From creating campaigns to producing reference packs, and writing materials for clinical trials to charity communications (and more!), I strive to deliver clear and compelling content that’s far from cookie cutter. I look forward to bringing my knowledge and experience to help support our clients on a wide range of projects.
In my spare time, you’ll find me cooking or baking (and then shortly afterwards, eating). I also love running, so in non-pandemic times I clock in for parkrun at 9 a.m. sharp on a Saturday morning. Not content with PB-hunting alone, I’ve set myself the goal of running a marathon next. Wish me luck!
* It’s pronounced A-liss-ia, but I won’t hold it against you if you get it wrong!
