Nicky obtained her Chemistry degree by day release study from Kingston University. Her early working life was lab based, in pharmaceutical chemical development labs at SmithKline Beecham Worthing, and then in scale up chemistry for drug discovery research at Novartis in Horsham. Although Nicky enjoyed the ‘creating something useful’ aspect of her role, she made the swap to health and safety in 2006 to broaden her experiences. She re-trained and became the Health, Safety, Environment and Business Continuity Manager for the research centre, working to Corporate and ISO Management Systems. She very much enjoyed the collaboration and sharing expertise with similar colleagues in research sites around the world.

When the 75 year old Novartis site closed in 2014, Nicky was part of the decommissioning team, an experience that was both an immense learning opportunity but also extremely challenging from a variety of perspectives.

Nicky took up her current role at the University Brighton in 2015, working in the central health and safety team and specifically supporting colleagues in science, engineering and medical schools.