From scented flashcards to the rail network

How Young Enterprise changed Emma Attwood's mind about her future

Emma Attwood, 24, from Ogmore Vale in South Wales, was certain she was going to be an engineer. Then she spent a year running a company.

At school in Bridgend, Emma became Managing Director of Archways, a Young Enterprise Company Programme team named after the school itself. The team's product was a genuinely original one: revision flashcards scented with various essential oils, designed to help students improve their memory and recall while studying.

Running the company alongside her A levels was demanding, and Emma is candid about what that year actually looked like. Archways started with 25 members and finished with five. The team that remained took the company all the way to the Young Enterprise UK Final at County Hall in London in 2019, where Emma pitched Archways to an audience of 400 guests.

By then, her plans had changed. The experience of building and leading a business had shown Emma a different route, and she went on to study Management with Innovation at the University of Bristol rather than engineering. She secured a graduate role at Arcadis, where she has been developing her project management skills in the rail sector, working alongside engineers on multi-million-pound projects.

“Taking part in YE at school was a transformative experience for me, it made me change my career thinking and no doubt played a major part in securing my role at Arcadis. The adaptability I learned from YE enabled me to look beyond my first role after graduation and think about the possibilities beyond this. I have no doubt that the resilience and problem solving skills I gained will also be put to good use in the next chapter of my career.”

Since graduating, Emma has been a passionate advocate for Young Enterprise's programmes and a key member of the Wales Local Volunteer Team, supporting the next generation of young people through the same experience that redirected her own path.

That next chapter has just started. Emma’s begun an ambitious Masters and PhD at the University of Cambridge, sponsored by Network Rail. She is stepping back from her YE volunteering to focus on her studies, and she has a clear message for other alumni and for the wider business community:

“If you have skills and experience to share that will benefit young people taking part in YE's programmes then please get involved. It is so important to show young people while they are in education what they can achieve beyond it. I remember the mentors who supported my Company Programme team when I was at school and how that motivated us to get as far as we could with our journey.”