Sixth-form students who attended Walkers’ Business Summer School for a week-long programme of presentations, tours and events exploring career and training options on and off island in law, the financial services industry, hospitality and entrepreneurship have praised the event.
This is the second year running in which Walkers has run the event in both Guernsey and Jersey – the programme included presentations from Walkers’ lawyers, sessions run by local financial services providers, tours of local business, and mock trials presided over by Sir Michael Birt KC in Jersey and Lieutenant-Bailiff Hazel Marshall KC in Guernsey.
The event is led by partner Alison Ozanne from Walkers’ Insolvency and Dispute Resolution practice group in Guernsey. “Once again we have had groups of really switched-on, engaged students who have been keen to get the most out of the experience,” she said.
“Hopefully they have a bit of an understanding of what the industry is all about – the aim here isn’t to recruit potential lawyers, it’s more for Walkers to play our part in the community and offer something to students who are making big decisions about careers and higher education.”
Feedback for the event from the students included:
- “The Walkers Business week has been an incredible experience. Their dedication to give us an exciting and valuable insight into the adult world and what they do on a day to day basis has been extremely useful, especially at such an impressionable age for our futures.”
- “Thank you so much for this experience. We all learnt so much.”
- “With each day covering different sections such as Law, Companies, Finance, Marketing, Hospitality, Entrepreneurship and Moot I found the five days to be incredibly useful and am grateful to all the companies and individuals who gave up their time to deliver talks.”
Alison added her thanks to the teams at St James in Guernsey and the Radisson Blu Hotel in Jersey, who hosted the events, and to the guest speakers from firms including Investec, Intertrust, Grant Thornton, Hassium Investments Ltd, Irwin Mitchell, and XXIV Old Buildings who came to speak to the students.
She said: “There are some amazing career opportunities for young people in the Channel Islands but young people need to be given the chance to understand and discuss the options. That is what we aim to achieve with the Walkers Business Summer School, and we are so pleased at the way that this has come together, with a lot of support from a lot of people. We will definitely be back next year and we look forward to the event continuing to grow.”
Main picture shows Walkers’ Business summer school in Jersey.
