“It is far more effective than being lectured to and brings out key skills, such as negotiation and communication, in a very safe environment.”
Keerthi Mukku

In 2016, UKESF Scholar Keerthi Mukku was named winner of the inaugural Skills 4 UK Scholar’s Award and received a place on Skills 4 UK’s award-winning Career Development Programme, as well as additional coaching.

Keerthi, who studied at the University of Surrey and was sponsored by Renesas for her scholarship, now works as an Embedded Software Engineer for Qualcomm, a world leader in next generation mobile technologies, where she is developing software to test Bluetooth chips for headphones and other audio technology.

One year on from receiving the award, Keerthi has shared her experiences in a case study on the Skills 4 UK website:

“It was fantastic to work alongside 12 other women who had much more experience than me. As the youngest, I was privileged to hear women working in the same sort of field as I recount very personal stories of mistakes they had made and the obstacles they had overcome. These real-life examples and all the exercises which followed around self-analysis proved invaluable. It is far more effective than being lectured to and brings out key skills, such as negotiation and communication, in a very safe environment.

“Another valuable lesson learnt was to both showcase your achievements and to let the people you work with know what you want to achieve. I have only been working for a month, so I have not come across any issues yet but the programme has helped me set goals and increased my confidence. I am currently working in a product-based role and I want to quickly move to a customer-facing role and the company is already helping me toward achieving my aim.”