"I remember, the very first month I was at Unilever, I had the opportunity to travel to Argentina and visit some of our consumers there. There I was, sitting in the home of this woman, who had very little money, listening to her talking very earnestly about one of our cleaning products that she used on her spotless floor. And it really brought it home to me that there are people out there who trust us to understand their needs and respond. I think that's a big part of the thrill of this job.
I knew I wanted to get out of academia because, once you're an expert in one field in academia, you tend to get stuck there, and I wanted to broaden out and apply my training. Now I feel particularly privileged: we can use the insights from science to really understand what consumers are saying, and we still have the interaction with universities as well.
My current responsibility is to deliver the consumer insights that the Laundry business needs. As part of that, I'm doing some research of my own basically exploring how we find out where to go next with laundry products, which is quite a challenge and really interesting.
What I love about Unilever is that it's constantly challenging. Just doing good science in this place isn't enough – you have to understand the business needs and work more broadly than your specialist field, but then you still have the research freedom to say 'this is the best way to answer this question'. It's also so nice that you have people from all over the world working here. There's a real richness and diversity, and individuality is appreciated."
